Badal Sircar: Scripting a MovementAuthor(s): Shayoni MitraReviewed work(s):Source: TDR (1988-), Vol. 48, No. 3 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 59-78Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4488571 .Accessed: 28/09/2012 07:28

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Badal Sircar

Scripting a Movement

Shayoni Mitra

The ultimate answer [...] is not for a city group to prepare plays for and about the working people. The working people-the factory workers, the peasants, the landless laborers-will have to make and perform their own plays. [...] This process of course, can become widespread only when the socio-economic movement for emancipation of the working class has also spread widely. When that happens the Third Theatre (in the context I have used it) will no longer have a separate function, but will

merge with a transformed First Theatre.

-Badal Sircar, 23 November 1981 (1982:58)

It is impossible to discuss the history of modern Indian theatre and not en- counter the name of Badal Sircar. Yet one seldom hears his current work talked of in the present. How is it that one of the greatest names, associated with an exemplary body of dramatic work, gets so easily lost in a haze of

present-day ignorance? While much of his previous work is reverentially can- onized, his present contributions are less well known and seldom acknowl-

edged. It was this slippage I set out to examine. I expected to find an ailing man reminiscing of past glories. I was warned that I might find a cynical per- son, an incorrigible skeptic weary of the world. Instead, I encountered an in- domitable spirit walking along his life path looking resolutely ahead. A kind old man who drew me a map to his house and saved tea for me in a thermos. A theatre person extraordinaire recounting his latest workshop in Laos, devis-

ing how to return as soon as possible. Sircar's criticisms of city life have not lost their edge with time, nor has his vision of social change dulled. It's true that he now operates on what he calls "a principle of conservation of energy" (2003a), but that does not prevent him from being mentally and physically in- volved with the work of his group, Satabdi, at every juncture. Considering his

prolific past and pertinent present, looking just at the "then" or "now" of his career, as many earlier critics and interpolators of his work have done, is rather

limiting. To understand the immense contributions this man has made to In- dian theatre we need to take a holistic view of his work. In the year before his

The Drama Review 48, 3 (T183), Fall 2004. ? 2004 New York University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

59

6o Shayoni Mitra

1. Badal Sircar, Kolkata, 2001. (Photo by Avik Chatterjee)

8oth birthday therefore, it becomes worthwhile to retrace the long road Sircar has traveled. Yet he him- self is characteristically reticent: "Why should I look back? I only think about my life's work when people like you come asking questions" (2003a).

In compiling a comprehensive account of Sircar's life in the theatre, I have distinguished between the written, the theorized, and the performed, with the awareness that the first two are grounded in the third and indeed inseparable from it. It is important to note that Sircar himself eschews the divisions. According to him there is no difference between his roles as playwright, director, and actor. With his clear precise logic he says, "I wrote plays to perform them. I am a theatre person, that's all" (Sircar 2003a). True enough on the level of personal motivation perhaps, but more complex when considering the body of his work historically. His actor's body must fade, but what of his performed and published plays, the com- mitments that have guided them, and his directorial influence? I believe that even as there can be no sure way to measure the influence of Sircar's distinct roles, each has had a profound impact. They however con-

tribute unequally to Sircar's fame. His better-known scripts and radical new

theory of theatre get the most critical play while his contemporary work con- tinues to pass relatively unknown. It is not sufficient to look at any one frag- ment of Sircar's work and make assumptions about the rest, for no individual segment is a metonym for the whole. I attempt therefore to bring his present activities into focus by looking at them through the lens of his theatrical his- tory. Such a trajectory will necessarily obviate Sircar's omniscient commit- ment to the theatre of social change.

Transforming the Word

The i96os was a definitive decade for the arts in many parts of the world, including India. Moving into a postcolonial era, Indian theatre was starting to be demarcated in national terms. What comprised national theatre itself varied from one region to the other, but for perhaps the first time we Indians could begin a discussion of what or who constituted our modern Indian theatre. In this decisive discussion, Badal Sircar was included without exception.

After writing a few pure comedies of middling local Bengali renown in the late 195os and early '6os, Sircar shot into the national limelight in 1965 with the publication of Ebong Indrajit (And Indrajit). Written in 1963, the play re- volves around a Writer's search for the subject of his play. Stuck for inspiration and torn between his Mother and Manasi,I he summons Amal, Vimal, Kamal, and Indrajit out of the audience to be the subjects of his play. The first three pass from school to college to careers and family life without event, following the predictable vector of middle-class tedium. They are therefore unsuitable fodder for a dramatic work. Indrajit however is markedly different. Forever restless, he looks for ways out of his dreary life. He cannot marry the person he loves, his Manasi, because she is his first cousin. He marries another. Drained by a life of meaningless substitutions, Indrajit realizes that each break he makes from his preordained middle-class life brings him back to the same

Badal Sircar 61

predictable pattern he was trying to escape. He finally confesses to the Writer that he is indeed "Nirmal," the last in a chorus of rhyming names summoned from his anonymous audience (Amal, Vimal, Kamal, and Nirmal). The Writer refuses to accept this. While the others mirror each other in their banal exis- tence, he contends Indrajit and him are different-special. In response, Indra-

jit blandly charges:

INDRAJIT: It's your job to write. So write anyway. What have I to do with it? I am Nirmal.

WRITER: But you are not looking for a promotion-or building a house- or developing a business scheme. How can you be Nirmal?

INDRAJIT: But...but I'm just an ordinary man.

WRITER: That doesn't make you Nirmal. I am ordinary too-common! Yet I am not Nirmal. You and I can't be Nirmals.

INDRAJIT: Then how shall we live?

WRITER: Walk! Be on the road! For us there is only the road. We shall walk. I now have nothing to write about-still I have to write. You have nothing to

say-still you have to talk. [...] For us there is only the road-so walk on. We are the cursed spirits of Sisyphus. We have to push the rock to the top-even if it just rolls down. (Sircar 1974:56)

Ebong Indrajit is by any reckoning a hallmark in Indian dramatic history. On its first appearance it was hailed as unquestionably "modern."2 Showing the

angst of the educated middle-class man, the script was branded existentialist, in the tradition of Camus and Beckett.3 It consequentially broke away from the naturalist conventions that had tied down Indian theatre until then. Scenes were fragmentary, a characteristic that was to become an abiding feature of Sircar's plays. Unity of time was shattered to create instead a montage of past and present life. The language used was itself a novelty. Leading Marathi play- wright G.P. Deshpande aptly captures the spirit of this innovation when he

says, "Badal Sarkar's [sic] Bangla is radically different from the pre-Sarkar the- atre speech in Bangla. That it came close to actual speech is not its only achievement. The economy of words was unknown to several theatre tradi- tions in India" (2002:I I). Another linguistic attribute of Badal Sircar's scripts is his extensive use of poetry and his characteristic wry humor.

Ebong Indrajit was an instant success onstage. It was translated from Bengali into Hindi, English, Marathi, Gujarati, and Kannada and produced through- out India. Among the renowned directors and groups who staged the play are B.V. Karanth with Darpan, Girish Karnad with the Madras Players, Sambhu Mitra with Bohurupee, and ShyamanandJalan with Anamika.

Sircar, working in Nigeria from 1964 to 1967, was prolific, writing six plays in the three years, firmly establishing his reputation as a leading contemporary playwright. Baki Itihaas (The Other History, 1964) and Pagla Ghora (Mad Horse, 1969) are the two other landmark scripts of this "existential" phase. The first deals with a couple imaginatively reconstructing the circumstances of a casual acquaintance's suicide, only to realize that neither of their (melo)dramatic re-creations is true. The man killed himself because of the burden of that "other history" (for instance, Auschwitz or Vietnam), the his- tory that kills millions of people everyday but one for which people rarely take direct responsibility. Sircar squarely places the collective responsibility for these

62 Shayoni Mitra

heinous crimes on all of humanity. Pagla Ghora depicts four men at the grave- yard overseeing the cremation of a suicide victim, a girl whom they all knew.

Through scenes from each of their lives, we are lead to understand that every one of these men has been responsible for the deaths (literal or metaphorical) of many such girls whom they have mistreated.

With the widespread publication and high-profile productions of these

plays, Sircar became a name to reckon with. Yet all was not well. Richard Schechner poignantly captures the imminent unease in the playwright's life when he writes, "Badal knew that the 'modern theatre' of psychology, drama, the spoken word, the proscenium stage, the box set, and the separate audience was dead. Worse, it was rotting" (1983:25; see also Schechner in 1972). For

many reasons, which I will discuss later, Sircar was dissatisfied with the prosce- nium stage. But he could not simply turn to traditional Indian folk theatres either. Being a city-bred man, Sircar felt the need to break away from both the

indigenous folk styles widespread in India before colonization and the genres "imported" by the British, which were the two predominant theatrical strains in post-Independence India. Sircar's solution was what he called "Third The-

atre," a theatre that would employ an idiom unique to the postcolonial urban

environment, drawing on the foundations laid by the first and second theatres that so far had peaceably coexisted in India.

The first script of the Third Theatre was Michhil (Procession, 1972). Gone was the self-agonizing middle-class individual, replaced by the "prototype" of the ordinary man. The play is the story of the unnoticed disappearance of

young men in an anonymous urban landscape. Victims of police violence and state oppression, the mysteriously disappeared can neither be traced nor ac-

knowledged as lost. Taking its dominant imagery from Kolkata's (Calcutta) nickname as "the city of processions," the young dead Khoka and the old lost Khoka unite in their search for the true procession, one that has not lost its

meaning through endless empty repetition. Also prominent are the Police, Master, and Guru, who interchangeably reflect the machinations of violence,

money, and religion that the state employs to oppress and opiate the masses. Michhil ends with a human chain in which the performers invite the audience to join as they hum a simple, optimistic tune.4 Both the closing image and the tune are powerful testimonials to the possibility of social change.

2. Amra Manush Boti,

performed at Satabdi'sfesti- val of plays, Loreto Day School, Kolkata, 28 Febru- ary 20o4. (Photo by Avik

Chatterjee)

Badal Sircar 63

Michhil too attained great popularity in production. It was performed by big and small groups alike who believed themselves to be engaged in some kind of social project. These productions are much harder to trace, unlike the well-

publicized, big-banner extravaganzas of the playwright's early plays, as they were seldom reported unless as part of festivals or

retrospectives.- This is of

course because the fundamental emphasis of Sircar's plays changed. Also by now Satabdi (literally translated as "century," close in meaning to "era"), founded in 1967 with actors who had responded to an ad in a local newspaper Sircar placed for actors, was more active in its Third Theatre avatar than it ever had been on the proscenium stage. Ironically, the most decisive productions of Sircar's plays were performed by his group under his direction-but these were still generally ignored by the press and theatre intellectuals.

Among the better known Third Theatre plays are Bhoma (1979), adapted from the true life-story of a peasant in the Sundarban district of Bengal who becomes an allegory for the ordinary man; and Bashi Khobor (Stale News, 1978), a contemporized account of a 19th-century tribal revolt. In these works, identifiable characters are minimized to give dramatic space to the faceless masses, the poor, the peasantry, the working classes. While in general the denouement of these plays is more optimistic than Sircar's earlier plays, the overall tone in them is darker. No longer is the world meaningless and opaque. It is uncaringly transparent in its brutality and injustice. Increasingly Sircar holds up to view the oppressive forces driving society with the hope that rec-

ognition might lead to change. Even though the fundamental emphasis of Sircar's writing changed with

time, certain tropes recur throughout his dramatic works. Prime among them is the notion of haunting. While suicide, either contemplated or executed, is a staple of the early plays, the dead or the disappeared frequently appear to re- veal or explain the difficult truths of life." Another major preoccupation dur-

ing this phase of his career is the nuclear bomb, which inevitably finds its way into his works.7 It is perhaps his strongest image for the devastation wreaked on humans by other humans. Sircar is unrelenting in his point that we, the middle class, regardless of our geographical placement, share in this colossal crime. A third recurrent concern, albeit of a milder order, is the Kolkata sub-

way system. While the state government spent a fortune on in its construction, incurring huge foreign debt, the fact that the subway makes much of the urban

groundwater inaccessible is usually ignored." These specific references aside, there is much that linguistically binds Sircar's dramatic works. Ananda Lal, well-known Kolkata theatre critic, describes it succinctly: "His plays are char- acterized by socially conscious themes, a wry sense of humor, pithy dialogue, and simple direct language which attains an aphoristic, even poetic quality" (2003:I250).

The life of any dramatic work is inextricably linked with its performance history. Sircar's plays have been performed all over India in various languages. As is inevitable when dealing with such a prolific writer, a select few plays have been canonized and tend to be performed repeatedly. All the plays described so far belong to this category and it is for their excellence that Sircar first

gained prominence. Well before his Third Theatre work, Sircar was awarded India's highest honor in the field of theatre by the national academy for the performing arts. The 5968 citation reads, "For his eminence in the field of drama and his contribution to its enrichment, Shri Badal Sircar receives the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Play-writing" (ENACT 1969). In 1969, he was awarded the Padmashree, the greatest national recognition for artists in In- dia. While recounting this early fame, however, it is important to keep in sight

64 Shayoni Mitra

Satabdi Productions

1967-200oo4

Kabi Kahini Shanabaurir Kathokatha Bhango Manush Muktomela Bagh Janmabhoomi Aaj Mani Kanchan Shadheen Bharat Bichitro Anusthan Shada Kalo Hattomalar Oparey Michhil Pralap Churna Prithibi Captain Hurrah Tringsho Shatabi Shara Ratir Bioscope Gondi Lakshmicharar Panchali Shesh Nei Bhool Rasta Bashi Khobor Bharatmata Ki Khel Ballabhpurer Rupokatha Padda Nadir Majhi Ekti Hathhar Natyokatha Pariksha Sagina Mahato Androcles Ar Shingho Manushe Manushe Rupokathar Kelenkari Abu Hussain K-Ch-T-Th-P Nagini Kanya Bhoma Ebong Indrajit Nadi Te Khat Mat Kring Sukhopatho Bharater Itihas Spartacus Charoi Bhati Shidi Amra Manush Boti Prostab

that playwriting is just a part of Sircar's work. His subsequent radical gestures came from his redefinition of the theatrical space and manipulation of the ac- tor's body.

Transposing the Space The formulation of a Third Theatre grew out of Sircar's dissatisfaction with

conditions of the proscenium stage.9 The financial constraints of group theatre in Kolkata-where people were unpaid but were entirely committed to the theatre-made the "infant mortality rate" of such groups high (Sircar 2oo3a). Sircar first staged a few plays under the banner of the youth club Chakra. In 1967 he formed Satabdi. Its first performance was Kabi Kahini (The Poet's Story) in 1968. By the early '7os Satabdi's proscenium productions were un- tenable financially as well as artistically-the group could not afford to rent a theatre to show their work. Unwilling to give in to the stasis, Sircar started questioning the very concept of theatre. Interestingly many others at the time, in both Bengal and elsewhere, were experiencing similar dissatisfactions with the proscenium stage.'o But Sircar's scrutiny of space brought him different an- swers. He realized that while cinema was a popular medium and could show

Badal Sircar 65

much more than theatre, it lacked one fundamental element that was intrinsic to the theatre-liveness:

Theatre can show very little, but whatever it can show is here, now. The

performers and the spectators come to the same place, on the same day, at the same time; otherwise the event of theatre will not happen. [...] That is the strength. That should be emphasized. (Sircar 2oo3a; see also Sircar 1993:8)

Sircar and his group realized that ifliveness was definitive, then the prosce- nium arrangement was entirely unsatisfactory. Instead of enhancing performer- spectator interactions by removing barriers, the proscenium theatre only im-

peded it by creating obstacles through artificial contrivances of lighting and

seating. Rather than pretend the audience did not exist, Sircar saw a need to inhere the audience in the performance: "The demand of the spectator in the new theatre is not an illusion of reality, but of reality itself, the reality of the

presence of the performer" (Sircar 1982:26). This meant that the actor and

spectator had to share the same space and acknowledge each other's presence. Direct communication was to become the cardinal feature of the Third The- atre.

This new theatre depended entirely on acting--"the performer's body on the one hand, and the spectator's imagination on the other" (Sircar 1993:24). As only human presence was to be emphasized, the other trappings of the the- atre became redundant. Elaborate sets were no longer possible; lighting was

general and/or minimal. Costumes could be incorporated to some extent but more for symbolic signification. Makeup was now superfluous since the actor and spectator were in such close proximity. These changes did not come to Satabdi all at once. They were wrought gradually through a policy of trial and error:

We realized that if we do theatre we are doing away with all the costly and heavy items of theatre. [...] So gradually a flexible, portable, and in-

expensive theatre is being created. Flexible and portable, therefore inex-

pensive. Flexible means we can do it in any condition. Portable-we can carry our theatre easily to places where we want to perform. We don't have to charge any money for that you see. Voluntary donations we will do. So the basis of free theatre is laid. (Sircar 2003a)

Third Theatre had turned into "free theatre" in three ways: First, there was free expression-it promoted direct and therefore uninhibited communica- tion; second, it was free from the paraphernalia of conventional theatre; and

last, it was offered at no cost to the audience. Satabdi first moved off the elevated platform to perform in rooms. This was

alternately called "intimate theatre" or Anganmanch (an angan being an indoor

courtyard, a decidedly intimate space in community life; and manch meaning stage). In 1972 Satabdi performed Spartacus, its first Anganmanch piece, pre- sented in a room at Kolkata's Academy of Fine Arts, itself an established venue of conventional theatre. But the location of the allotted room, on the second floor and away from the main auditorium and galleries, marginalized Satabdi's performances." Sircar heard of concomitant performances by Silhouette, an- other theatre group, that were being staged in the open space of Curzon Park in the heart ofKolkata's office district. Kolkata Satabdi began performing there every Saturday. Though one would assume that the fluid character of an audi- ence on lunch break would be disruptive, it was quite the opposite. Satabdi

66 Shayoni Mitra

3. Human chains are a fa- vorite of Sircar. They are the most graphic representa- tion of people coming to-

gether to work in tandem for social change. Amra Man- ush Boti, Loreto Day School, Kolkata, 28 Febru- ary 2004. (Photo by Avik

Chatterjee)

gained a following of regular viewers who came specifically to watch their shows. In fact, Sircar claims, "These Saturday performances became quite an institution in Kolkata" (1993:17; see also Bandopadhyay 1997:29 and Banerjee 1997:35). Michhil, performed in 1974, two years after Spartacus, in Ramchan-

drapur, a village in West Bengal, was the first play designed entirely for the

open air. Here was free theatre at last. Even in Anganmanch shows the group had been charging a token one-rupee entry fee.

A logical development leading to truly free theatre was the gram parikrama (village tour).2 Sircar consistently has argued that those in the urban centers are an elite minority (see, for example, Sircar 1993:41, 53, 63; Bandopadhyay 1997:30). Often accused of romanticizing the rural landscape (Deshpande 2004), Sircar characterizes it as "a vast rural hinterland which perhaps is the true India" (I98I:51). A true theatre of the people therefore would have to go where the majority of the population lived. Satabdi went on its first parikrama in 1986 for three days and two nights. It has since been trying to undertake at least two such tours every year.

While content was becoming increasingly the focus of Satabdi's work, the

stylistic changes became noticeable first. It was the radical departure from es- tablished realist stage traditions that had many people referring to Sircar's the- atre as "experimental" and "alternative" (see Raha 1978; Richmond 1993; Yar-

row 2001). Free theatre is also often loosely used synonymously with street theatre because both are flexible, portable, and inexpensive. And while he has no objections to the conflation per se, Sircar clarifies the distinction. He and other members of Satabdi define street theatre as a quickly created short per- formance, which has some topical value.'3 So "street theatre in a way is Third Theatre. But all Third Theatre is not street theatre" (Sircar 1993:64).

Badal Sircar 67

There are similar overlaps when talking about Sircar's influences. Sircar himself admits that he learned the most from observing and sometimes work-

ing with practitioners like Jerzy Grotowski, Joan Macintosh, Judith Malina, Julian Beck, and Richard Schechner. "Influences will always be there. The

question is whether you are copying something exactly or whether you are as-

similating things and doing your own thing, I mean fulfilling your own needs"

(Sircar 2003a). Third or free theatre can never be like Grotowski's physical theatre because, Sircar says, those conditions of performance are simply not available in India.

We cannot do free theatre if we work full-time. [...] Grotowski some- times limits his audience-only 30 people can come in. But huge ex-

pense [is incurred] when they perform in the United States. Tickets are

very high priced. That is certainly not our way. [...] I asked Grotowski, "What kind of people do you take in your group?" [He replied,] "Those who have some six years of full-time study in ballet or five years of full- time study in theatre." He takes only them and after that he trains them for four or five years. Only then they become suitable for acting with Grotowski. (Sircar 2003a)

Similarly, Sircar says of Schechner:

Richard Schechner for example, he never did proscenium theatre. He does environmental theatre. When he did Mother Courage [1975-77] I found there is a link. [...] But when I read in TDR about his Marilyn Project [1975-76], I found it absolutely irrelevant in our work you see. So to him environmental theatre is important, the theme is not so im-

portant. (2003a)

Form aside, there has to be an organic link, otherwise the work of others has little meaning to Sircar. Sircar has said of his own theatre:

There is no separate stage-the performance is on the floor; that is the

performers and the spectators are within the same environment. [...] This is intimate theatre. The performers can see the spectator clearly, can approach him individually, can whisper in his ears, can even touch him if he wants. (1982:25)

Sircar's Third Theatre then does share many of the formal characteristics of environmental theatre that Schechner says he codified but did not invent. While Third Theatre is always content driven, environmental theatre need not be. To add to the complicated genealogies Schechner rightly says of Sircar:

I think that summer [1971] the work he did with me and Joan Mac- Intosh in India and then in 1972 in British Columbia where Badal

joined The Performance Group in residence for some weeks, were in-

strumental in setting his path out of the indoor theatre and into the streets. I may be wrong; or Badal may have a different recollection. (Schechner 2003 a)

Schechner claims street theatre is a type of environmental theatre,' which ob- viously has other genres operating within its general rubric as well (Schechner

200oo3b). If one were to put these demarcations of space and content together for different types ofnonproscenium theatre it would look something like this:

68 Shayoni Mitra

A. Environmental Theatre-Six Axioms:

1. The theatrical event is a set of related transactions.

2. All the space is used for performance. 3. The theatrical event can take place either in totally transformed space or in 'found' space. 4. Focus is flexible and variable.

5. All productions elements speak their own language. 6. The text need be neither the starting point nor the goal of a production. There may be no verbal text at all.

(Schechner 1994:xix-xlv)

B. L Third Theatre:

1. Flexible-it can be performed anywhere. 2. Portable-it can be easily carried.

3. Inexpensive--because the major costs of theatre are avoided.

(Sircar 2003a)

C. E Street Theatre:

An environmental performance in the open that is flexible, portable, and inexpensive, and has a topical force.

(As derived from Schechner 2003b and Sircar 2003a)

All these evolutions in form and space were intended to support a content- driven theatre motivated by social change. For Sircar, the role of free theatre is to raise people's awareness of ways to fight for a better life.

This "project of conscientization" (Bandopadhyay 1997:30), exposes the lies and half-truths of the ruling classes and provides a concrete vision of a bet- ter future. Yet Sircar does not romanticize this theatre as the one true path to- ward revolution. "Let us be clear," he says, "that theatre alone will not bring about social change. But it can be one of the tools in the movement to bring about social change" (Sircar 2oo3a). But how much change has resulted from Satabdi's work? Sircar is characteristically self-effacing in his reply. "Infinites- imal. The actual change our theatre has helped bring about is infinitesimal. But my question to you is what else should we do? We are people of the the- atre. That is the only thing I know how to do" (Sircar 2003 a).

Others attribute much more to him, both positive and negative. Sudhanva

Deshpande, actor and director of the Delhi-based street theatre group Jana

Badal Sircar 69

Natya Manch (People's Theatre Forum), while acknowledging the "purity" of Sircar's life-long quest asks:

In the end how radical is the break in Badal Sircar's career? In the end his worldview remains essentially the same. He is basically a middle-class playwright (and I mean that as a descriptive and not a disparaging term). He is cynical of political processes and has a slightly romantic notion of the villager. (Deshpande 2004)

Chris Banfield and Brian Crow, theorists ofpostcolonial drama, make a similar assertion:

In his writing Sircar is not explicitly politically partisan, insofar as he re- fuses to align himself with any one political party, preferring instead to preserve the integrity that this independence has afforded him. His mo- tivation for writing has, however, become characterized by a passionate personal response to the injustices and oppressions endured in the lives of the poor and disenfranchised, both of his own country and beyond. (Banfield and Crow 1996: I 17)

These assertions can be addressed somewhat by looking into Sircar's per- sonal history, for questions of political orientation in Kolkata are often an- swered in relation to one's affiliations with the Party.'" In the 1940s, the decade of Independence, he was an active member of the then undivided Communist Party of India.'6 Thereafter he says he criticized the Party and was suspended. He persisted in organized politics for a year after his suspension, but then could not persevere further. In the early '5os he left the political arena never to return. Sircar poignantly depicts the accusations of his detractors and his de- fense against them in what is apparently an autobiographical scene.'7 The fol- lowing is an extract from the sequence of Prasanta's examination in court by The Man in Shesh Nei (There's No End, 1970). Prasanta is brought there to testify that his friend and political protege, Sumanta, deserted his comrades:

PRASANTA: In forty-nine there were plenty of reasons for frustrations for persons like us.

THE MAN: What reasons?

PRASANTA: Do I have to teach you India's political history?

THE MAN: It is not a question of teaching. I want to know what could have happened that he suffered from frustration and you didn't?

PRASANTA: Who told you I didn't?

THE MAN: But you did not give up politics.

PRASANTA: No, that's because without politics I have nothing else to do. If I find the Party taking wrong decisions or deviating, I'll criticize, I'll argue, raise hell, but I'll not leave the Party like he did. ([1970] 2oooa:346)

The character Sumanta later gently defends himself: "There was no other way, Prasanta. If you gave up politics you would have died; if I didn't I would have died" (349). Nonetheless, Sircar confesses, "After I left politics, there was a huge void. Many things came into my life then, one of them was theatre" (200oo3a).

70 Shayoni Mitra

So while Sircar's is indeed a leftist political project, he displays disillusion- ment with organized political parties. His drastic shift from proscenium to

open-air theatre did evolve into a philosophy of theatre for the people. Sircar traveled a long way from writing existential pieces to crafting plays with a vi- sion of a changed society. The transition from depicting the alienation of the middle classes to writing about the lives of workers and peasants is arguably a Marxist progression. His version of a better future can however be somewhat

utopic. It is best outlined in his play Hattamalar Oparey (Beyond the Land of Hattamala, 1977). Two thieves-named Kena (Bought) and Becha (Sold), ob-

viously representative of the evils of capitalism--chance upon a land of no money that operates according to the Communist principle of each to the best of his ability and to each according to his need. After many escapades they de- cide shamefacedly to give up their evil ways and live in this new land, one as a mason and the other as a gardener. Hattamala ends with the chorus singing:

CHORUS: Whatever we need in this world, whatever, We can make it all if we work together, We'll work our best indeed, And take whatever we need, We'll share everything we have together. Come, let's share everything together, Whatever we need in this world, whatever, We'll make it all if we work together. Why go on shopping rampages? Why do we slave for more wages? We'll share what we have together. Come, let's share everything together. (Sircar [1992] 2003b:38)

Sircar writes of the play, "This is one of those plays in which I take genuine pride. I was upholding a possibility that I had projected in my earlier Prostaab

4. The white screen in the background appears in al- most every Satabdi produc- tion, and is used for entering and exiting. Amra Manush Boti, Loreto Day School, Kolkata, 28 Febru- ary 2004. (Photo by Avik

Chatterjee)

Badal Sircar 71

[Proposal, 1973--where he argued for the abolition of money in society] with almost missionary zeal" (in Bandopadhyay 2003:ix).

It is hard to judge the impact of Sircar's socialist politics. It is true however that he has been reaching audiences larger than any conventional theatre does

simply by moving outside of the conventional proscenium stage and perform- ing for free. His has been a sustained effort to make his plays and the surround-

ing debate accessible to all viewers and has empowered them to participate in local political discourse. After 18 years of parikramas in the villages, Sircar can

hardly be accused of paying mere lip service to rural audiences. Sircar's innovations in the use of public space have had a profound impact

on Indian theatre. Even though experimentation for its own sake was never his intention, his example encouraged many others to explore different styles. Shyamanand Jalan, who staged Sircar's plays in the '70s and '8os, insightfully summarizes his impact:

He inspired a lot of theatre persons all over India to experiment freely and without regard to the traditions of the theatre. He led himself and his followers on the path of a purposeful theatre responding to the soci-

ety and its problems. Moreover, his own efforts to do theatre without

support or means encouraged a lot of enthusiastic theatre persons to rise above the limitations of finance and resources and concentrate on freely expressing their own ideas and emotions without caring how to mobi- lize the theatrical paraphernalia. (Jalan 2004)

But if this purposeful theatre was to survive, it required more thanjust med- dlers interested in its form. What was needed to carry Third Theatre forward was a group of committed practitioners who were invested in its content. After the scripts for change were written, a movement ensued. "The entire process of change involves a philosophy, and [I] believe that the new language can only be established if it takes the shape of a movement" (Sircar 1982:36).

Transfiguring the Body

One can only understand Sircar's writing and theorizing by following his

practice. It is a long history of dedicated activity, most of it far from the glare of the national spotlight that has sporadically shined on him. Truly a man of the theatre, Sircar has nurtured a group that is now in its 37th year. He has

spawned a movement that continues to attract new people even decades after Third Theatre has passed from the dominant theatrical and critical interest. His influence is inductive. He works with his group and they in turn inspire mimetic configurations. He conducts workshops with individuals who be- come enthused to do their own theatre. As a result, elements of Third Theatre have traveled far and wide, crossing boundaries of language, class, culture, and nationhood. Its locus and its energy are however always and ultimately in the human body.

Satabdi is a group that shuns boundaries--there are no demarcations of role or function within the group.'8 No elected functionaries make decisions that will be imposed upon other members of the collective. Sitting in a circle at the start of each play, members discuss themes and share ideas. Scripts often emerge from this communal brainstorming. But even when there is a pre- existing script, the method of the group demands that the performers inter- nalize the concerns of the play and make them their own. If this process of identification does not come naturally then the play is deemed inappropriate by the entire group. This psychological mode is intrinsic to the concept of a

72 Shayoni Mitra

content-driven theatre. The commitment to the notion of social change nec- essarily demands that each member feels the imperative for the change, even if the specific problem in the play is not one s/he shares.'9

Spartacus was the first play to be produced using this practice. As part of the workshop to develop the play, the actors maintained a "book of feelings," a daily ledger of the things that moved and affected them, to relate to the epic theme of Howard Fast's novel about a slave revolution in ancient Rome. Sircar writes of this phase:

By the time we took up Spartacus, I had come to a diametrically oppo- site position as a director. I did not put down anything beforehand in notes, signs, and diagrams. [...] The finalization of the choreography would depend on the decision of the group rather than that of the direc- tor. (1993:12-13)

Already we see the diminishment of the celebrated playwright to a member, albeit an important one, of a group that shared collective responsibility for its productions. This trend continued in later practice.

Satabdi is still identified with its most famous member. Indeed one seldom hears mention of some of the other longtime members of the group, such as Dipankar Dutta, Kalyan Ghosh, Krishna Ghosh, Preeti Dutta, Shanta Dutta, and Tapas Mukherjee. It is true that Sircar has written or been involved in the evolution of an overwhelming proportion of the 44 plays Satabdi has done.2o He has also directed all but five of them. But things are slowly changing. Bis- haka Dutta directed her own play, Shanaboorir Kathokatha, for the group. Shada Kalo (c. 1994), based on apartheid in South Africa, received much acclaim un- der the direction of Dipankar Dutta. Initially the play had a cast of 14, which was then reduced to three (Dipankar, Kalyan, and Tapas) for parikramas. Sircar admits that he was initially skeptical about whether the theme of apartheid would be understood or relevant to all, but was happily proved wrong when both versions of the play were very well received by urban and rural audiences alike. "Dipankar had real talent," he lauds. But this actor/director with great potential passed away in 1996; "It is a loss that we are still trying to get over, Sircar mourns. When I visited the group in December 2003, I saw a new play being rehearsed, Charoi Bhati, with Tapas Mukherjee as director. However, when I interviewed him during a rehearsal, Mukherjee said that the appella- tion is a misnomer: "more appropriate would be coordinator, the person who takes the responsibility of conducting and concluding rehearsals" (2003).

With usually at least one new play every year, Satabdi presents an estimated 40 performances a year. Gram parikramas are still an abiding feature of the group's activities. While the group sustains itself by passing the hat around af- ter each performance, it has after many years raised its very flexible fee for a "call" (invitational) show to ,000ooo rupees (roughly U.S.$20). This sum is by no means compulsory. The group continues to perform at fixed weekly venues, only it no longer publicizes the shows by sending out postcards, as it used to in the past.

This does not mean that Satabdi has isolated itself. It consciously sees itself as part of a theatrical movement for social change. It has nurtured alliances with other groups that do Third Theatre in and around Kolkata. While many such groups have sprung up only to soon become defunct, the two that Satabdi has closest ties with are Pathasena (Army of the Road, started in 1979), based in the suburb Sorsemukhi; and Ayna (Mirror, started in 1988) ofKanchrapara, which is an hour and quarter train ride away from Kolkata. These three groups have similar organizational structures and share the same philosophy. They

Badal Sircar 73

take turns performing Friday shows at the Loreto Day School in Central Kol- kata, and at the bimonthly Saturday afternoon shows in Nandan, a middle-class cultural hub in the city. Satabdi, Ayna, and Pathasena have a ready repertoire of Sircar's plays, which makes it easy to interchange actors if any performer from one of these groups is unavailable for a show. Also, they try to have an annual meeting of all the members involved in the activities of these three groups.

Badal Sircar is still very much the life force of each of these groups. He has directed three plays with Ayna. At one time, he would attend Sunday morning rehearsals with them and return to attend Satabdi's evening rehearsals in the city. When this hectic commute was no longer physically viable for Sircar, the group opted to send two of its members over to his house every week to evolve a smaller play. Pathasena, based too far out of the city, has not had as much of Sircar's directorial involvement. But he has conducted the occasional work- shop with them as well as helped in their production of Rabindranath Tagore's famous play Raktakarabi (Red Carnation). A difficult play by any reckoning, Pathasena entirely self-directed the production, receiving help only in script editing and characterization from Sircar. Prepared after much hard work, Pa- thasena's Raktakarabi is now a "landmark production of Third Theatre" says Sircar (2003a).

With advancing age, Sircar's everyday interaction with Satabdi is diminish- ing. He has long since stopped writing plays. Of late his directorial interven- tion also has been minimal. He has stepped aside from all his acting roles except that of the old man in Michhil. Even that he is now willing to let go of. Sircar now operates on the principle of conservation of energy-but he does attend Satabdi rehearsals regularly. It is his presence that is important, for he takes on any and every function. A little known fact about him is that he com- poses the tunes for all the songs in the Satabdi productions. Though never mu- sically trained, Sircar says he is now familiar with the pattern of the classical ragas"' even if he cannot name them (20o3a). From refining the actors' accents to filling in for missing actors, Sircar is as committed to his Third Theatre now as he was when he was younger. So even as Sircar's body weakens physically, we must look back and recall how he changed the very basis of using the body on the Indian stage.

Sircar's theatre has often been termed "physical." It is a justified description even if not a comprehensive one. He did in a way revolutionize the presence of the modern actor onstage. His actors went from being adept at performing psychologically complex characters to executing a much more physical idiom. Freeing them from the constraints of realistic depiction, Sircar encouraged the actors to use movement, rhythm, mime, formations, and contortions to ex- press themselves physically. Since acting was the focus of Third Theatre, the actor's body became its most powerful tool. Sudhanva Deshpande aptly as- sesses Sircar's contribution to changing the anatomy of the Indian actor:

He more than anyone else pioneered the play without the text. It was the technique of using the actor as text. The body of the actor becomes the text. The result is a Spartan production which is an ideological posi- tion. The stand of course is that "I will use nothing else because that is the essential thing." (Deshpande 2004)

A vast majority of Sircar's plays post-1972 were fragmentary and episodic, using a visual diction as much as the verbal one. Michhil was groundbreaking not only in its subject matter but in the way it was directed and performed. Most vivid were the scenes of rapid transition from one procession to the next

74 Shayoni Mitra

with only the actors physically reconfiguring themselves to give the impres- sion of the endless litany of meaningless slogans that are the aural populace of Kolkatan streets." During the course of the play, the actors rapidly configured themselves into a train, bus, factory, a street wedding band, distinctive Hindu, Muslim, and Christian religious processions, an independence march, a patri- otic walk, a protest march, and an execution scene. The extent to which Sir- car's Third Theatre is physicalized can be gleaned from the following detailed

description of the opening sequence of one of his other plays:

The first moments of Bhoma are so unobtrusive that it takes time to re- alize that the play has started. Six actors dressed in black shorts and loose black shirts sit around the acting area and do some preliminary exercises and warm-ups to relax their muscles. After lying on their backs, they begin to pant with varying rhythms and pitches that increase in volume and suddenly stop. The actors rise, join hands, and look intently at one another. Then they walk around the room, occasionally stopping to stare at the particular spectator in the audience. Their movements are

stealthy, somewhat tentative. A chorus chants in the background and the actors onstage crouch on the floor, responding ever minutely to the mournful cadences of the song. The crouching of the actors, as they cave their bodies inward and bury their faces in their hands, evokes the

suffering of the people in an uncanny way. (Bharucha 1983:175-76)

This redefinition of the theatrical body naturally demands long and hard

training. Training mostly occurs in the extensive workshops that Sircar con- ducts to develop each play. It is a system that he observed abroad but modified to uniquely suit his ideology. "Our workshop process is completely different from training in the ordinary drama schools. I really got it from the States at first-from Richard Schechner. I tried it here but gradually it went on chang- ing, suiting our own needs" (Sircar 2003a). While "ordinary" drama schools offer "additive" training whereby the actor gains more skills over and above those he already possesses, Sircar's way is by subtraction:

Acting is expression. But our civilized life, particularly city life is just the opposite right from childhood. It is suppressing. [...] Now as theatre is expression, it is a reverse process of everything we learn in our child- hood. Just take out, one by one like an onion, the inhibitions we have

developed and go and see what is within. (Sircar 2oo3a)

The language Sircar employs here to describe his work and his practice itself have an affinity with the "via negative" of Grotowski, an artist he has often been thought to emulate.

While for Satabdi members the workshop process is a lifelong one, it has often been compressed into seven days for outsiders. Sircar has conducted ex- tensive workshops in India as well as Bangladesh, Britain, Pakistan, and now

Laos.23 Working with all groups of people-from intellectuals to illiterates, professional actors to lay performers, political activists to children -Sircar has ensured that spatial and temporal divides will not impede the growth of his theatre. The participants need not be theatre persons at all. In fact Sircar says he has conducted workshops with children, workers, and peasants who have had no conception of drama. What is compulsory though is that everyone is a participant and no one an observer, for even one observer might bring in fal- sity or competition, which defeats the purpose of the workshop process. It is for this same reason that Sircar says he never describes the actual process of a

Badal Sircar 75

workshop-what happens there is very personal and dependent entirely on the composition of the performers present. What it does try to achieve though is the linking of the physical with the mental. The actors must use their bodies to express what they feel, to show the content of the piece. This is why Sircar's

workshops, as with his theatre, have as their ultimate focus the human being. This is where the real life of this movement lies-in the vitality of the hu-

man body. Even as Badal Sircar's own energy wanes, the work of people in-

spired by him gains momentum. Third Theatre will never occupy the

glittering stage of Indian drama. Yet it will continue to imperceptibly trans- form the country's social landscape. As well-known theatre commentator Rustom Bharucha writes, "If there is any director in the contemporary Ben-

gali theatre who is capable of creating a genuine people's theatre-a theatre

supported and created by the people and not merely performed for the peo- ple-it is Badal Sircar" (1983:I188). Long after the famous plays have slipped from public memory and the novelty of the theory has worn off, what will travel into the future is the movement that this man scripted.

Notes

I. While the Mother ceaselessly nags the Writer to eat, Manasi (literally meaning "the mind's creation"), continually asks if he has written anything. In a final strategic inver- sion, Manasi forgets herself and parrots the Mother's enquiry, "Aren't you eating?" (Sir- car 1974:50). For a further discussion of this and the rest of the play see Banerjee (I999), ENACT (1969), ENACT (1972), ENACT (1976), "Introduction" by Karnad in Sircar

(I974), Raha (1978), and Yarrow (2001). 2. For a discussion on Sircar and modernity, see Deshpande (2002) and Raha (2002). 3. Dharani Ghosh remarks:

Ebong Indrajit (And Indrajit) seems to draw heavily on Beckett, though the play is about an educated middle-class person in Kolkata who tries and fails to retain his individuality. But I was told that Sircar had never read Beckett. I was really surprised, for here is a playwright who has evolved an idiom in a Western tradi- tion but independent of the Western source. (in Gunawardana 1971:242)

While the last sentence may be true of Sircar's dramatic writing, it certainly does not hold true of his dramatic technique. I trace his "Western" influences later in the article.

4. For further discussions of Michhil see Babu (I995), Bandopadhyay (1985), Banerjee (1999), ENACT(I976), Gupta (1978), Kaushal (1984), and Sircar (1982, 1993).

5. Amol Palekar, Rattan Thiyam, and Satish Anand are among the better know theatre

persons who have performed Michhil (see ENACT 1976; Kaushal 1984). 6. In Ebong Indrajit, Shesh Ney, Baki Itihaas, and Pagla Ghora there is direct talk of suicide.

In Michhil, Bhoma, Bashi Khobor the emphasis is on the disappeared dead. 7. Baki Itihaas, Bashi Khobor, Michhil, Tringsho Satabdi. 8. Addressed in Bhoma. During my interview with him, while talking about exposing the

half-truths fed to us by the governments, he called the Metro Rail project "downright criminal" (Sircar 2003).

9. The following is a synopsis from my interview with him of Sircar's account of his move from the proscenium stage to the outdoor performance area in (Sircar 2003a). Written accounts can be found in Sircar (I98I, 1982, 1993).

Io. For instance, in Bengal, Utpal Dutt had started undertaking open-air performances that

ranged from one-man plays related to political elections from the back of trucks to ad-

aptations of the Bengali narrative drama folk form, jatra. Dutt in this phase always pur- sued overtly determined political themes, usually identifying himself as a Communist

Party worker. For more on Dutt read Bharucha (1983:55-119). I I. For more on this read Bandopadhyay (1997:28) and Sircar (1993:I6). 12. Parikrama literally means circumambulation, an etymology that gives a ritualistic nature

to the tours themselves. This is also interesting in light of Sircar's idealization of the ru-

76 Shayoni Mitra

ral. I am indebted to Vasudha Dalmia, South Asian scholar at the University of Califor-

nia at Berkeley, for this insight. 13. I think this is a very limiting definition. Street theatre can and routinely does deal with

issues that outlast the merely current. Also, the plays are not always hasty agitprop

pieces. The diagrammatic demarcations that follow are part of an attempt to see how

famous practitioners (dis)claim street theatre for their own. They are not, however, in- dicative of the way street theatre is practiced in India today.

14. Axioms four and five of environmental theatre do not entirely hold for street theatre

(Schechner [1973] 1994:xix-xlv). The point of focus is usually sharp-it is directed at the action and argument of the play. Similarly, because of its very nature, street theatre does not employ all the elements of production equally so as to do each justice. Lighting and other technology-related elements are often a matter of availability and not essential to any production.

15. The "Party," in Kolkata, refers to the Communist Party of India (Marxist). Active in

Bengali politics since the 1940s, the Party has now ruled the state for 27 years. It first came into power in 1977 and holds the record worldwide for the longest ruling demo-

cratically elected Communist government. 16. There was a split in the Party in 1964, which resulted in the CPI, Communist Party of

India, and the CPI(M), Communist Party of India (Marxist). 17. I realize that making an argument about the politics of an artist's work by resorting to

inferred autobiographical information from a fictional scene is problematic. But the ex-

change quoted here, though fictionalized, nonetheless corroborates Sircar's own ac-

counts of the period. 18. This section is based on information from conversations with various Satabdi members

during December 2003. 19. This is different from Augusto Boal's Forum Theatre, where the participants are en-

couraged to present their own problems and the post-scene forum is used to enact dif- ferent strategies for solving the problem. (My understanding of Forum Theatre is based on my participation in workshops conducted by Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory over February and March 2004, and Theater of the Oppressed [1979] and Games for Actors and Non-Actors [1992] by Boal.) The process of autobiographical presentation is perhaps acted out most closely in Sircar's workshops. But a lot more than just personal story- telling is involved in them. My argument here is different from Bharucha's in Rehearsals

of Revolution where he suggests, "If Boal's models of political theater were adopted by Sircar, they would not, I think, be foreign to him. On the contrary, they would simply extend his own exploration of theater as 'rural-urban link' " (1983:I84). I am not con-

vinced that Sircar is at all interested in proposing concrete strategies for tackling prob- lems through either his plays or workshops. Neither does he suggest any "rural-urban link" beyond the belief that plays are understood by all audiences irrespective of where

they are crafted. 20. The exceptions are Captain Hurray by Manik Chattopadhyay, Shanaboorir Kathokatha by

Bishaka Sarkar, and Dokhol, Amnra Manush, and Boti (which was named by the group) by

Dipankar Dutta. 21. A simplified definition of the raga would be a melody pattern in classical Indian music.

Each raga is a complex tune and harmony system that is appropriate to specific seasons, moods, or times of days.

22. I saw a video recording of a 1988 performance of the play. The show was in a village field during the day. The actors mimed the total darkness that the play requires, using matches to show the necessity for light. Songs were usually sung with the actors walking the circumference of the acting area.

23. For workshop statistics until 1993, see Sircar's Voyages in the Theatre (1993:57). For an-

ecdotes from specific workshops see Sircar (1993:58-63). See also Bharucha (1983:

181-84).

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Shayoni Mitra is a PhD candidate at the Department of Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts/NYU, where she completed her M.A. in May 2004. She received a B.A. and M.A. in English from St. Stephen's College, Delhi University. Her inter- ests are political performance and Indian street theatre. She has been a member ofjana Natya Manch, a Delhi-based street theatre group, for the past four years.