 "The middle-class rebel")
BADAL SIRCAR: TOWARDS A THEATRE OF CONSCIENCE
Author: Anjum Katyal
Publisher: Sage
Pages: 266
Price: Rs 995
Describing the new theatre in Kolkata in the 1960s, critic Samik Bandhopadhyay, in a 1970 interview with journalist A J Gunawardana, said: "They (theatre workers) still don't want to do theatre entirely outdoors. They say that the conditions are very uncertain - the bombs." As the Naxal movement gained violence and the state responded with unbridled repression, leading to an all-out urban guerilla civil war, Calcutta, as Kolkata was then known, became the nightmare city. Satyajit Ray, in a letter to actress Mary Seton, wrote: "The political situation is getting so rough here that I'm beginning to worry about any Calcutta project."
Yet, it was on these streets - and parks and open spaces - that thespian Badal Sircar and his group stepped out to do some of the most politically committed and technically innovative performances in Indian theatre. (Ray, too, shot his three gritty Calcutta films on these streets.) Anjum Katyal's new critical biography (or biographical criticism) successfully traces Sircar's development from his early comedies and amateur theatre with friends to masterpieces Ebong Indrajit and Sara Rattir to his complete rejection of the proscenium stage for environmental and street plays.
Empathy with the poor and the subaltern and outrage at the stultified existence of the middle class (Sircar's own social class), as Katyal shows, was an essential characteristic of Sircar's theatre even in his early comedies. Ebong Indrajit, which established his reputation as a playwright and became one of the definitive texts of modern Indian theatre, began questioning the live-work-reproduce cycle of the comfortable middle-class life. The introspection continued in Baki Itihas, Tringsha Satabdi and Shesh Nei, exploring individual guilt for an unjust world and the existential crisis sparked by the possibility of annihilation by a nuclear bomb.
As Katyal rightly points out, many of these issues had already been explored by the Existentialists and Absurd playwrights in Europe - I would add the Beats in the United States and the Hungry Generation in India. Sircar, too, acknowledged the influence of different sources, but very often adopted - like he did with Grotowski - these to a specific Indian context, making them peculiarly poignant. As the dreams of Independence were eroded by the cruel economic and political crisis in the country, the time was just ripe for the new kind of theatre that Sircar would explore. Katyal's book, in the first few chapters, competently traces the journey, from his days of doing recreational theatre in Maithon to his trips to London, Paris, East Europe and Nigeria. The chapter titled "Nigerian Interlude", which is intended to describe Sircar's his sojourn in the African country, is a tad disappointing. It has no mention of his life as an urban planner in Nigeria, which was then on the verge of the Biafran war. The intellectual and political struggles of the hotbed of African postcolonialism could not have been missed by Sircar - but Katyal's book makes no mention of it.
Theatre criticism is often a daunting project because of the fluid nature of the form. No two performances of the same play are identical and it is nearly impossible to convey the experience of theatre through words. Katyal is well aware of this impossibility. In the "Introduction", she writes: "for a scholar of theatre interested in doing a book on a theatre artist or movement, research methodology can quite justifiably be compared to detective work - piecing together clues, locating reliable sources, arranging fragments of information into coherent patterns…" Katyal's wide and industrious scholarship allows her to fluently perform the impossible role of theatre historian, and also to contextualise Sircar's theatrical development.
"In 1971 and 1972, when Badal-da was exploring new spaces to present his alternative theatre… Calcutta was in the grip of upheaval," she writes in the chapter titled "Procenium Farewell". "…Youth from the same urban educated middle class that Badal-da had addressed in his plays about guilt and responsibility were drawn to this militant, radical left out of a combination of that very guilt and responsibility, almost as if in answer to the questions he raised in Baki Itihas…" To use Grotowski's term, Sircar, decided to abandon the relative safety of indoor theatre spaces and make himself "vulnerable" on the streets.
Describing the reason for making Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa (1998) - an adaptation of the eponymous Mahasweta Devi novel on the search of a Naxalite's mother for the reasons that radicalised her dead son - film director Govind Nihalani said: "The '70s was the only time after the Independence movement when middle-class youth staked their lives for social change." Many lost their lives; others became political prisoners - the subject Patwardhan's documentary. Driven by their conscience, they could not continue with their apathetic existence, plunging into struggles for social reform.
The continuing popularity of Sircar's plays - both for the proscenium and outside - is proof that social reform, through art or politics, continues to appeal to newer generations. Katyal's book, which explores new ground by devoting entire chapters to gender and technique in Sircar's theatre, is perhaps the most comprehensive critical work on him. It will appeal to theatre scholars and practitioners alike - not only for its rigorous scholarship but also because of the fascinating story it narrates.
