Drama, Performance, History of Theatre Research Papers (original) (raw)

Theatre has been acknowledged as a tool for global socio-political transformation. Similarly, in the context of colonial and post-colonial India, it is considered to be an important player in bringing about a sense of cohesive national feeling. Theatre also served as the platform where major ideological debates were played out to create and sustain a country which believes in social justice and equity. Two regions in India led this socially relevant theatre movement, namely Maharashtra and Bengal, which was then taken up by the entire country during the last century. It is, therefore, important for us to harness the inherent energy and document this intangible heritage of India, which helped shape in many ways the sensibilities of our times. Although we have long understood that set design, lights and of course audiences, among many other things, are co-makers of meaning in the playhouse, most theatre histories pay scant attention to their role in demarcating periods of theatrical history and motivating historical change. These theatre histories are indicative of the relationship between the playwrights, plays and actors. In fact, our ignorance of the dynamic interplay between the multi-layered aspects of theatre is due to the difficulty of researching the topic; reliable information, documentation, expectations, behaviour, and response of historical audiences and other earlier aspects of theatre is not easy to acquire. The two exceptional books being reviewed try to fill that gap in the history of India. One provides an overview of theatre in Bengali, while traversing 200 years of Bengali theatre, and the other considers one of the most significant figures in modern Indian theatre, namely Badal Sircar (1925-2011). Bengali theatre, or theatre in Bangla, wherein Bangla or Bengali can be understood as two different sets of intertwined meanings, geographic location and also linguistic location, is enmeshed in the troubled history of India and Bangladesh. Utpal K Banerjee's Bengali Theatre 200 years provides that elaborate canvas and full range of what is understood as Bengali theatre or theatre in the Bengali or Bangla language from across the border. This book is a result of a seminar on theatre in 1995 by Sarita Sanskriti Samaroh, which was attended not just by theatre practitioners, but also connoisseurs and admirers of theatre from every walk of cultural life. From 1795, when on 28 November, the first play, 'Kalponik Song Badal', a translation of the play, 'The Disguise' was staged in Calcutta by a Russian, Gerasim Stephanovich Lebedeff, to this day, the text navigates various modes of theatre and several responses to theatre making and reception of theatre. This book achieves what many theatre histories have lacked. The book focuses on various essentials which are a blend of earlier autochthonous modes of theatrical expression and the colonial European consciousness, which heightened the Bengali and Indian consciousness about 'nation', that brought about the national movement. Neither can the context of the Bengal famine, IPTA (Indian People's Theatre Association) and popularity of 'Nabanna' be forgotten. One expression that describes this book is 'total theatre' as it encompasses the perspective from actors, directors, to set lights and set designers. It is thus not an official version of Bengali theatre history, but a history from the grassroots, from the practitioners themselves, which accommodates multiple voices. It has poignant passages from the lives of actors, their day to day struggle to get into theatre, including Binodini Dasi, Golap Sundori to our contemporaries like Saoli Mitra, Sampa Ghosh. Banerjee's classification of the contributions in eight sections not just provides details of significant plays and theatre events over the last two hundred years, but also a critical commentary on the evolution of theatre, for example, Manoj Mitra talking about the art of playwriting, Tapas Sen about light design, Khaled Choudhury about his experience in stage designing, and Utpal Dutt about experimentation in theatre. This book is not just a vital resource for theatre enthusiasts, but equally for students, as it provides insights to theatre from practitioners across various fields such as Mrinal Sen. Furthermore, it brings in diverse