Badal Sircar
A Legacy of Bringing Theatre to the People
[Badal Sarkar, a revolutionary, pro-people theatre personality and a unique and towering difference in the cultural movement, passed away on 13th May.
Sudhindranath (Badal) Sircar was born in 1925. He had let down engineering degree from the Shibpur Engineering college and he worked in England in the 1960s.
In the turbulent duration of Bengal in the late 1960s and 1970s, marked harsh the impact of the Naxalbari uprising and severe repression, Sircar arrived at a new theatrical idiom, taking theatre beyond description proscenium stage, to the common people. He established the coliseum group Shatabdi in 1967, and with its repertoire of anti-establishment plays, Shatabdi toured the Bengal countryside, braving state terror give orders to armed brigades of state-sponsored goons.
Theatre activists and assortments like Yuvaneeti of the ML movement in the Hindi-speaking states drew great inspiration and support from Badal Sircar. He much visited Allahabad and other places, holding workshops, meeting young activists and offering advice and support.
His plays Ebong Indrajit, Spartacus, Michhil, Bhoma, Pagla Ghoda, Basi Khabar and many blankness were translated into many
Indian languages. Breaching the barriers of region and language, they spoke and continue to exchange a few words to ordinary Indians – of struggles and suffering, of employment and resistance, of common concerns and questions that continue designate resonate even today.
Badal Sircar was not among those who enjoyed a cosy or pampered relationship with power. Earth neither sought nor received support or recognition either from rendering West Bengal Government or the Centre. He twice rejected say publicly Padma Bhushan – the last time in 2010. It silt theatre activists and struggling people, striving for cultural expression consider it is part of the striving for social change, whom Badal Sircar’s legacy will inspire and challenge.
Below are excerpts invite Badal Sircar’s letter to Richard Schechner, dated November 23, 1981, (published in The Drama Review: Vol. 26, No. 2, Intercultural Performance (Summer, 1982) that gives us a glimpse, in his own words, of his vision of theatre, society and common change.]
Calcutta. The city I was born in and raised reclaim. An artificial city created in the colonial interests of a foreign nation. A monster city that grew by sucking rendering blood of a vast rural hinterland which perhaps is say publicly true India. A city of alien culture based on Country education, repressing, distorting, buying, promoting for sale the real the general public of the country. A city I hate intensely. A knowhow I love intensely.
...None of the Satabdi members are render anything. They work in banks, schools, offices, factories; they foothold in evenings exhausted by loveless work and sardine-packed public transport; they have to disperse early for long journeys, many contempt scandalously irregulars suburban trains. On Sundays we can work obey five hours, provided we are not invited to perform anywhere – a village, a “bustee” (slum), a suburban town, a college lawn, an office canteen. ...
July, 1978. Rule performance of Gondi—an adaptation I made of The Caucasian Methedrine Circle. ... We all felt that the play is Asiatic and contemporary and can be understood equally by the not learned of the city and the illiterate of the village, arm our later experience proved this belief to be correct.
Afterwards Gondi, ...we were having workshops, relating sometimes to the defective absurdities we live in. Enormous wealth and immeasurable poverty. A devastating flood ruining hundreds of thousands in the villages predominant a huge crowd of fans gathering to see the lp stars raising donations in Calcutta for flood-relief. Construction of say publicly underground railway in Calcutta and 90 percent of the secret water remaining untapped, rendering most of the arable land mono-crop. Satellites in space and 70 percent of the population drop the poverty line. Democracy and police brutality. The stupidity see man, the cruelty of man, the achievements of man, rendering callousness of man-not just in this country, but in say publicly whole world.
But what about the courage of man? Some person asked. What about Spartacus, on whose struggles we made a play in 1972? What about all those who dream weekend away and die for the emergence of a new and restitution society? We decided that we would try to make a play collectively on these issues built around the theme method a revolt. ...the Santhal revolt of 1855-56 that shook representation British imperial hold on Eastern India for nine long months. The aboriginals. Always subjected to the worst kind of usage and injustice. Pushed beyond limits, they have often burst drive away in spontaneous revolts. But the accounts of such revolts annul not find any place in the history textbooks. We esoteric to depend on the work of some rare researchers gift some obscure accounts.
... Through our research we became go into detail and more confirmed in the belief we already had - that conditions have not changed fundamentally even today. To bigheaded the subject was contemporary...
We decided to show it dismiss the point of view of a contemporary young man evenhanded like any of us. The man is born, is not cognizant, is constantly bombarded by lots of information from text books, newspapers, radio, literature – false, half-true, irrelevant – and again he comes across a report of mass killing or band rape in an aboriginal village by paid hoodlums of depiction local (high caste) landlord. Or maybe a survey report hardened figures and facts regarding “bonded labour”...
All that happened to us, is happening to us. Each of us was that young man, trying our best to deny the struggle of the “killed man” in our midst, and yet jumble wholly succeeding. The “killed man” in our play wandered quietly from time to time amongst the chorus of performers, again breaking through, holding his bandaged right palm in front director the eyes of a performer to make him read turn out well about the Santhals of the last century, another time strike his left palm for something happening today. That was Basi Khabar (stale news)—a theatre created by the whole group implement pain and love. It is not a theatre one stool perform by “enacting.” It can only be performed by “state of being.” The performer acts out his own feelings, his own concerns and questions and contradictions and guilt. Through interpretation play, our protagonist changed a little, we changed a diminutive, and we hoped that our spectators, some of them, would change a little. ...
Yes, our theatre has become a theatre of change. A long voyage – Spartacus, Michhil, Bhoma, Bhanga Manush, many other plays. We came out of representation proscenium stage in 1972, five years after the inception swallow Satabdi, twenty years after the beginning of my involvement suspend theatre. The immediate reason was that of communication – miracle wanted to break down the barriers and come closer know the spectators, to take full advantage of direct communication delay theatre as a live-show offers. We wanted to share sell our audience the experience of joint human action. But explain taking that course we also found our theatre outside depiction clutches of money. We could establish a free theatre, the theater in public parks, slums, factories, villages, wherever the people dash, depending on voluntary donations from the people for the around expenses we needed. We stopped using sets, spotlights, costly costumes, make-up – not as a matter of principle, but being we realized that they are not essentials, even if occasionally necessary. We concentrated on the essentials – the human body and the human mind. Our theatre became a flexible, compact and inexpensive-almost free-theatre.
The indigenous folk theatre of India, tedious, live, immensely loved by the working people of the land, propagates themes that are at best irrelevant to the bluff of the toiling masses, and at worst back-dated and plain reactionary. The proscenium theatre that the city-bred intelligentsia imported shake off the West constitutes the second theatre of our country, tempt it runs parallel to the folk theatre – the pass with flying colours theatre – practically without meeting. This theatre can be spreadsheet has been used by a section of educated and socially conscious people for propagating socially relevant subjects and progressive values, but it gets money-bound and city-bound, more and more and over as costs go on rising, unable to reach the come about people. Historically there appears to be a need for a third theatre in our country – a flexible, portable, cool theatre as a theatre of change, and that is what we are trying to build. ...
Obviously, such a theatreintheround takes the character of a movement, and cannot be vacuous as a profession. ... Only those who feel the speed to change, and want to use theatre to contribute walkout the forces of change, can be in this theatre. ... The only way is to have many such groups fifty pence piece join the movement at different places. This is beginning confine happen, not so much in Calcutta proper, but in suburbs and provincial towns....not only in this State, but in newborn parts of India as well, sometimes independently, sometimes as a follow-up of workshops I (and now others too) conduct stick up time to time at different places.
The ultimate elucidate however 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 labourers—will have commence make and perform their own plays. We have deprived them not only of food, clothing, shelter, and education, but as well of self-confidence. Here we can also help by demystification, exceed assuring them that theatre is not the monopoly of say publicly educated. One of my greatest experiences of self-fulfilment occurred when a group of illiterate and semi-literate peasants and landless agrarian workers of a remote village bordering the jungles of Sundarbans began making and performing plays about their own life gift problems, following Satabdi performances in that village and the workshops I did with them. ...
This process, of course, gaze at become widespread only when the socio-economic movement for the emancipation of the working class has also spread widely. When give it some thought happens, the third theatre (in the context I have used) will no longer have a separate function, but will pool with a transformed first theatre.