Badal Sircar: Third Theatre…Centurian of a Paradigm Shift
Celebrate the centenary of Badal Sircar, a revolutionary thespian whose Third Theatre transformed community theatre worldwide. Join us as the Badal Sircar Natya Charcha Kendra organizes a year-long homage
One hundred years ago was born Badal Sircar, a thespian giant and revolutionary theorist whose philosophy and execution of the Third Theatre has found resonance amongst community theatre groups across the world. The Badal Sircar Natya Charcha Kendra has organised a year-long centenary celebration of this theatre ideologue. Let us begin with some views…
I walk between the rails of the railway line. It is a straight line. I look back. The iron rails meet at a far distant point. I look ahead. The same iron rails meet at a point in the far distance. The farther I move, the points move too. What is ahead is behind. There is no distance between the past and the future. What’s there is in the past is in the future as well. I used to wait for the arrival of the train. I would jump of, or run or at least fall under it. Do something. But nothing happens. Because no train runs on those rails. I have found that out. Sometimes I think… I think I must stop. Not walk any farther. Sleep on the track.
Great moments are preceded and followed by great moments. When we look a century back, it seems Badal Sircar’s – universally Badalda – birth was a year when history was being made’
1924. The Kohat protest movement under Mahatma Gandhi against the British colonial rule is going on in India.
1924: July 15th: Gopi Nath Saha, who few remember now, attempted to kill Charles Tegart, the British Commissioner of Police in Calcutta, failed and was hanged.
1924 July 15: the sharp cries of a tiny child born to a Bengali Christian family in the central districts of Calcutta rend the air. He came to be known as Badal.
Badal is synonymous with the clouds and rains in the Indian subcontinent. Ashadhrasya prathma divasey… ancient Indian poet Kalidas wrote in his fabled epic Meghdoot.
But who knew that this tiny child would trigger a paradigm shift in theatre!
July 15, 2024: Just a century later. The birth of this child is being celebrated across India, and not just in urban India, but across many of the villages, many of the slums, many in the broken-back factory workers’ dusty neighbourhoods and many of the local train stations, where the teeming millions of India’s 1.4 billion people struggle to survive.
Perhaps… just perhaps… this is also being celebrated across the world, starting with the World Congress of Drama and Education at Beijing, China. They, too, celebrated the birth of the child who completely changed the tapestry of theatre in India and abroad by his epic journey that turned over the meaning of Third Theatre… theatre of the people, by the people and for the people.
Badal Sircar. Just one name that has various meanings, various connotations, various versions, depending on your own class realism: do you disown the people, the multiplying millions that the supreme racist British Prime Minister, Winston Spenser Churchill had likened to “breeding as rabbits”. Or do you stand by their sweat and blood and toil, and then create THEATRE, as Karl Marx said, that arts and entertainment is the ultimate goal of labour.
We spoke to a high-class thespian and theatre activist, Debashish Chakraborty, the architect of the pan-India celebrations of Badal Sircar’s birth centenary.
“At the age of around ten or twelve”, Debashishda says about Badal Sircar, “he wrote his first ever “play”. It was a natural progression… he was born into a family where the preoccupation was English education. A house that is better described as a library; a highly learned father and an elder sister, little Badal scripted his first play at that tender age. And that play got promptly thrown out. And he promised to himself that he shall never write a play again!”
Debashisda continues, “You see… his elder sister was steeped in literature and naturally, her friends were… birds of the feather flocked together… all budding intellectuals. Among that flock was tiny Badal’s elder sister’s friend, Shukumari Bhattacharya. She later went on to become renowned as a Sanskrit scholar, Indologist and an author. Little Badal knew she was knowledgeable, so he chose to seek her approval.”
As Debashishda told me, “Instead of praise, he faced a firewall of approbation. Shukumari-didi literally threw the script on his face as “stuff and nonsense”. Suitably humiliated, Badal vowed never to write a play again“. Just think… it is the same Badalda who was later invited to Birmingham University in 1992, for a three-weeks session on theatre and his philosophy of Third Theatre; whose works are the part of the literature curricula of various British universities and there, scholars are doing their PhDs on his theatre; and the World Congress if Theatre chose his date of birth, July 15, as their convention for 2024!
But it must be remembered that Badal Sircar was not an isolated event. As the viral quote of the US Democratic presidential candidate goes: he had “not fallen from a coconut tree”. All around him, and always, he had been in the midst of major talents.
Evam Indrajit: A Revolution
Debashish-da (Debashish Chakraborty), who runs the Badal Sircar Natya Charcha Kendra continued, answering my myriad questions: “Theatre remained as it was in his DNA. He tried his hand as an actor. During the time when he was doing his course from Shibpur BE College of Engineering, one of his friends was Narayan Sanyal, who later turned out to be another titan of Bengali literature.
“He had written a play and was preparing to put it on stage in the college annual festival. Badalda sought a role to play in it, but Sanyal rejected him. Sanyal wanted him to play a female character. Badalda was angry, and told Sanyal: I will do much more than what you have done.
“Later, he did play small roles here and there in various drama groups. But his natural propensity was towards comedy, and this can be seen in the first successful play that he wrote, Solution X, which was based on an American film. His challenge, and endeavour was writing comedy, which is perhaps the toughest genre to handle in theatre. This was when he was already abroad, in Nigeria as a Town Planner. “And when he came for a break to Calcutta, he and his friends staged that play and it bagged the first prize in a competition.”
Debashishda continued: “He went on to write several comedy plays, such as Ballavpurer Roopkatha, Boropishima and quite a few others. At that time, he would inform his friend before coming for his holiday from Nigeria, and they would all gather and discuss literature, poetry, or novels, etc., and Badalda would read out his latest play. It was the then famous literary group named ‘Chakra’.
Evam Indrait: an Explosion
“On one such occasion, he came and in ‘Chakra’, he said that he had written another play, and hastily added: “I have written it. I had a collection of some of my old poems and with those included, I have written it, because I just felt like writing it. I do not even know whether you can it a play, or for that anything at all.
“That is when he read out Evam Indrajit. And that caused a veritable explosion in the group. Shamik Bannerjee, now the foremost intellectual tower of theatre and films, was incidentally present that day. When Badalda ended reading Evam Indrajit, Shamikda simply grabbed it and said, “I want this, just give it to me.” The very next day, Shamikda took the play to Shambhu Mitra. He was stunned and exclaimed: “What is this! Give it to me, this has to go in my theatre magazine ‘Bahuroopi’.
“Thus started a revolution in theatre in India, once people got to know it. And this revolution engulfed the entire theatre firmament across the country. But Badalda himself was quite unaware of the bomb shell he had created, because the very next day his leave was over and he had to leave for Nigeria.”
Some more views on Evam Indrajit…
A Stunned Theatre Firmament
As Debashishda continued, I listened spellbound. I had seen Badalda’s play Spartacus when I was about six and had been mesmerised. Much later, when I was about thirteen, my father took me to watch Evam Indrajit. I was again hypnotised. But I had no idea what was happening unbeknown to me. And that is what Debashihda told me.
“Then, Shambhu Mitra called Badalda to say that he wanted his own theatre troupe – Bahuroopi — to stage the play. But Badalda said that someone called Nibedita Das had already taken it and would stage it in “Angan Mancha”, her own theatre. Shambhu Mitra was saddened, but nothing could be done. But news about Evam Indrajit spread across the country like a prairie fire.
“Girsh Karnad translated it into English. Then came other translations…Marathi, Assamese… almost everywhere the play caused a theatre temblor. You see, why this happened is that Shambhu Mitra was a thespian giant on his own, and all the towering theatre personalities were known to him, because all of them were in the Indian People’s Theatre Association, the famous IPTA. And not just in India.
“Girish Karnad’s English translation was printed by the Oxford University Press. Later, Badalda was invited to speak at some of the most prestigious universities abroad because of this play. There are many such universities. I forget most of them but I do know that he had been invited by Birmingham University in the UK for holding third theatre classes for three weeks in 1992. Also, there are many universities in the UK where his theatre is part of their curriculum.
“Many students abroad are even doing their PhD on his philosophy of the Third Theatre. Scores of such scholars have visited India, specifically to watch his various Third Theatre plays being performed, They have contacted us, done many interviews and have written books on Badalda’s theatre. The manner in which he showcased and presented the existential crisis of then then middleclass in India is till today continues to flabbergast theatre pundits across the world.
“What Utpal Dutta said about Tagore’s Raktakarabi stands true for Evam Indrajit, that it will take us many births to understand what it is, and what we even now understand of it is just a hundredth part. But the question does arise that why do people sometime brand this as Naxalite theatre. That is not a fact. We are very clear that Badalda’s theatre is non-party Left, and the fact is thar our plays clearly hold hop the ground reality of our society as we experience it. And because of that, the Congress party has branded us as Naxalites; and the Naxalites have damned us as agents of foreign countries. Hence, all the political parties have run us down, because we have not, and shall not tow any ‘party-line’. The biggest and most correct definition is whether one is standing.”
Facing the Fire
“And for that our group had to face fire. Police firing. Badalda himself was not hurt, but others were, and one was killed. Once, we were staging our play at Surendra Nath Park, and the cops came and asked us to stop. They were not harsh. They said: ‘Please stop this. You see, we are facing a lot of pressure from above, that is why we are asking for your cooperation’. Badalda asked the officer if there is anything that they have in writing as orders. They said they don’t have anything in writing, and then Badalda said: “Well if you don’t have anything in writing, we can’t help it, we shall continue our play,” and we resumed the play. “
Some more views…
“But in one instance this police intervention became really serious.
“It was July 20, 1974. That day is celebrated annually as Anti-Imperialism Day. We were inside the fencing of the Surendra Nath Park. A huge crowd had gathered just outside the park. We could see the police force surrounding us.
“Suddenly, there started a scuffle. We could see it. The police claimed they had information that a certain top Naxalite leader had come there. They then started rounding up people and pushing them into police vans. Just then we saw scores of cops jumping over the fence of the park and running. I still shudder to think of that. We ran away and gathered under the porch of the Metro Cinema Hall. There, we heard that one man called Prabir has been killed in police firing. We thought he was our Prabir, a famous actor and was part of one of Silhouette theatre group. We rushed to the Calcutta Medical College and then we found that it was not our friend but Prabir Dutta, one of the regulars in the audience. I knew him.
“I had asked him once why he comes for every single performance. He said: ‘Badalda’s theatre is the inspiration for my poetry. I can’t write my poems unless I come for this show.’ That night, it was an unforgettable scene at the Medical College. Thousands of people gathered. A Calcutta troupe as famous as “Nandewar” of the theatre giant Rudraprasad Sengupta cancelled their paid performance that evening. The next day we gathered at the morgue of the hospital. The place was teeming with fabled intellectuals like Bibhash Chakraborty, Gurudas Dasgupta, Asit Basu and many others. We gathered to ensure that his body is handed over to Prabir’s mother, which the police had totally refused. They took his body, and we too reached Keoratala Crematorium.“
A Poet’s… Protest!
“Two days later, there was a huge gathering as a Protest Meeting at the University Institute Hall. Theatre workers, industrial workers, students’ organisations, common people… it was remarkable gathering. It was decided there that we shall hold a Protest but not in the hall. We decided that it will be held and we shall protest through our theatre, singing etc. Then it was decided that we shall perform Badalda’s play Michhil (Juloos. The Rally). The play had just been performed for the first time just a few days ago by Badalda’s troupe ‘Shatabdi’.”
“What was completely revolutionary was it was decided that the actors and actresses will come from various groups, not just that of “Shatabdi”, but under Badalda’s direction. Rehearsals started at the Academy of Fine Arts. There came Keya Chakraborty, Bibhash Chakraborty, Sunil Mukhopadhyay, Dhurjati Bhattacharya… the crème de la crème of Bengali theatre. Calcuttans in masses, even the newspapers (there was no mass television then)… the sense of participation in a theatre event was beyond imagination!
“Finally the show was held on August 24th, 1974 at Curzon Park. You have no idea, Sujit, what it was like. Film actors and film workers, theatre workers, industrial workers… that day everyone was walking towards Curzon Park. At the place of performance I saw Utpal Dutta, Bibhash Chakraborty, Gautam Ghosh… and that other giant of theatre, Ajitesh Bandopadhyay read out a poem written by Prabir Dutta and another one, his own. Then began the play, Michhil… it was a rousing moment of goosebumps… there was this character in the play named Khoka. In the play, when it came to Khoka dying, it seemed all Calcutta was morning the death of Prabir Dutta…
“And the fact that people across the country are eagerly celebrating his birth centenary just shows what the name Badal Sircar means. And this is not just among the urban intelligentsia. He has transcended classes and is for everyone, he is their Badalda. This protest movement against a theatre movement and a theatre lover who was a poet, spread across India… Tamizh Nadu, Karnataka, Assam, Maharashtra, Delhi, Punjab, Odisha… how many can I name. And this is how, Badal Sircar’s Third Theatre spread it wings which defied language and cultural barriers.
“Take Tamizh Nadu. Our team went there to the villages there where there are third theatre groups, to help them organise the celebrations. People had gathered from other villages too. They had even composed a song in the name of Badalda. Our team, naturally, could not understand a single word of Tamizh. All they could make out was one of the words in the speeches and the songs: BADAL. That’s all. So we realised that our Badalda was also their Badalda, living entity, which he shall remain.”
First, Second, Third
How does one explain this? Debashishda says: “Badalda had once taken a workshop for the priests of a church there. They were a very progressive group. The priests and nuns who attended the workshop then started performing in the villages, and Badalda too had been to a few of them. From these performances, local village groups of Third Theatre sprang up. And that is the essence of Third Theatre, because it is communication. Badalda has created this communication by breaking away from the closed and dark environment of the proscenium. This is the magic of Third Theatre.”
After a pause, during which he had a sip of steaming milk-tea, Debashishda resumed: “If one says Third Theatre, then there must be a First and a Second, right? Badalda’s formulation is that first, before we experienced cultural colonialism three hundred years ago, we had what he calls Deshaja theatre, theatre native to our land. Jatra in Bengal, Bhavai in Gujarat, Nautanki in northern India, or Tamasha in Maharashtra…these were all the First Theatre, which were open-air theatres, with the audience sitting in three sides of a raised platform. The audience came, watched and left.
“The Second Theatre, what Badalda termed as Deshiya, or had been introduced by the British of — proscenium after the British introduced it, and its Indianisation. In the proscenium, there is darkness and a unidirectional viewership. You enter a dark auditorium, and immediately the class difference surfaces. Those who have paid high ticket prices, get privileged front-row seats. And the lesser you are able to pay, the further removed you are from the actors. The proscenium is unidirectional, with everyone sitting in a complete darkness, facing the stage. The act is held. The actors have done their job if entertaining the audience, and after that, they are beyond the audience’s reach.
“Third Theatre is completely different. Here, it is not just open-air theatre. It is flexible, portable and inexpensive. Flexible because it can be adapted to any circumstance. You can hold it anywhere, whether in a village, or a shut-down industry or a school or even in a bank, by rearranging the furniture there. Because of this it is portable. Theatre can be enacted anywhere. There are no props, no costumes, nothing is needed, In the first and second theatre systems, the audience had to go to the venue where the act would be held. Here, in Third Theatre, the theatre goes to the audience. Sometimes, our troupe is invited to a village or a factory, or a slum, But many times, we walk along villages and enact our play, unannounced, at any place. And people come. And go back with an idea of doing this kind of thing themselves. That is how Third Theatre has become an infectious theatre movement… of the people, for the people, by the people.
“For instance, we went to the deep interiors of the Sundarbans. There, the NGO named Tagore Society was doing some work on rehabilitating the rural seasonal drought. The Sundarbans does not have groundwater and hence, the entire agricultural subsistence depended on the monsoon rainfall, The constant oceanic tides brought in saline water that rendered the soil unfit for agriculture. There, we found this organisation working out a plan for digging a canal to bring in Ganga water and store it in a pond so that cultivation throughout the year. So when during Parikrama, Badalda and we visited them, they asked us to draft a play for them. That play was a hit and the village troupe took it from village to village and today the entire area is much better off. This is the social goal of Third Theatre. This is the entire transformational role theatre can play.”
“Theatre is no longer an abstract art which too, in the original form of the proscenium, was divisive, strictly class-oriented. In Third Theatre, everything is open… the audience is sitting on the ground… it may be a village farm. It may be a shop-floor of a factory, People… not the ‘audience’, but people who have come to watch a play, just like the people who are enacting the play… it blurs ‘territories’ of the conventional class distinction of the proscenium. Because there is no audience. The people who have come to watch this play have also become participants in this shared experience. In the traditional Second Theatre, or even on the First Theatre… Jatra, Bhavai or Tamasha, there were still the stage and the audience, a class of bifurcation of ‘learned people and locals.
“In Third Theatre, the audience is sitting all around you. The act tors walk in the ring. They are all around, not just in front of the audience, but often walking and acting in between the audience and sometimes. Even behind them, so it becomes a throbbing, living and hence, transformational experience,” Debashishda concluded.
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