By IANS,
New Delhi: He was a man of the masses with a vision that changed the Bengali stage forever. Legendary playwright, director and actor Badal Sircar took theatre out of the auditoriums and to the streets, among the people. But age finally caught with him Friday when the diehard Marxist passed away at his residence in north Kolkata, barely two months before his 86th birthday in July.Born July 15, 1925, Sircar shot to the limelight with his anti-establishment plays during the Naxalite movement in the 1970s.
He will be remembered for his path-breaking genre of absurd theatre, and for taking it to the streets to make it more accessible to the masses.
Sircar penned darkly existential plays and satires about loneliness, urban angst and politics with new-age plays like “Ebong Indrajit” (And Indrajit), “Pagla Ghoda” (Mad Horse), “Baaki Itihaas” (Unifinished History), “Bhoma” and “Baasi Khabar” (Old News).
An accident early last decade forced him to cut down his active physical presence on the stage.
“I was run over by a truck eight years ago had had to be operated upon. The doctors
inserted steel plates from the hip onward – forcing me to cut down on my vigorous movement,” Sircar told IANS in an telephonic interview from his home in Manicktola, in March.
However, there was no crushing his indomitable spirit.
“I am reading plays, writing novels, plays and short stories in a frenzy. Currently, I am adapting William Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’ into a play, two of Graham Greene’s stories and a novel, ‘History of Love’,” he said.
“The last play, I directed was in 2003,” he said, a voice a shade wistful.
The street, public spaces and parks were his impromtu stage, far from the closed artifice and walls of the auditorium.
“There was no second theatre (proscenium stage) in my dictionary. All of it was
third theatre. I was the inspiration behind third theatre and absurd theatre in India – the theatre that went to the audience. But I was not influenced by Bertolt Brecht,” he had said.
Sircar’s third theatre was his own idiom that drew from the changing contemporary realities of Bengal, the growing people’s participation in politics during the 1960s and 1970s and mass cultural movements.
Bengal was looking for something different on the stage, Sircar had observed.
His life was influenced by an eclectic medley of cultural experiences. The playwright, who worked in London and later in Nigeria, was influenced by theatre stalwarts like Joan Littlewood, Anthony Serchio, Richard Schechner of the Performance Group and Polish director, Jerzy Grotoswki in 1960s.
“But if you ask me about my favourite playwright, I would say Eugene O’Neill. I don’t like modern plays like Tennessee Williams, frankly,” he said.
As a child, “he rustled up simple plays around fairy-tales like Cinderella at the behest of cousins in his extended family”.
In 1967, he founded his own troupe, “Shatabdi” and staged “Ebong Indrajit”, his signature production about four people, “Amal, Bimal, Kamal and the loner Indrajit”.
In 1969, he took theatre for the first time to the streets.
Sircar – more than a practitioner – was a phenomenon in the annals of Indian theatre who represented a movement for histrionic freedom on both the formal and non-conformist stage.
While Kannada director and playwright Girish Karnad says Sircar’s play “‘Ebong Indrajit’ taught him fluidity between scenes”, veteran theatre heavtweight Satyadeb Dubey recalls: “In every play I’ve written and in every situation created, Indrajit dominates.”
Actor-director Amol Palekar, who presented a festival of Sircar’s plays in Pune in 2004, credits him with “opening up new ways of expression.”
The director of a documentary on Badal Sircar, “Face In the Procession”, Sudeb Sinha says “it is almost criminal the way Sircar has been ignored in Bengal”.
Sircar was honoured with a Padma Shri in 1972 and the Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1968. His body has been donated for medical research.