Sunday, May 15, 2011

Homage to Badal Sircar

Homage to Badal Sircar

Amid Mamata Banerjee’s tumultuous victory celebrations in West Bengal, playwright Badal Sircar’s death on Saturday went virtually unnoticed. The octogenarian theatre-personality was the pioneer of the ‘Third Theatre’ and a strong torch-bearer of street play movement.
I knew him through his immensely popular plays, particularly ‘Juloos’, ‘Pagala Ghoda’ and ‘Evam Indrajeet’. I was part of ‘Juloos’ team in Vivechana ( Jabalpur) and was thrilled to watch Prashant Khirwarkar-directed “ Pagala Ghoda’ that featured stalwarts of then Bhopal theatre such as Rajiv Verma, Papiya Dasgupta, Vijay Dindorkar.
‘Evam Indrajit’ is, arguably, Badal Da’s most popular and controversial play that captured the angst of the urban youth in the sixties and seventies , not only in West Bengal but entire India.
Badal Da’s death has freshened my memories of early eighties when we in ‘Vivechana’ enacted ( to say staged would be to confuse, as we would, more often than not, act out the play without proper stage ).
That was our first play without proper director after director Alakhnandan and three of our actors including Ganga Mishra, Rajendra Kamale and Alok Chaterjee had left to join Bharat Bhawan repertory in Bhopal. The responsibility of direction fell on senior actor Arun Pandey.
We were lucky to have had chosen “Juloos” as the first play for Arun to direct. Honestly speaking, Arun’s directorial skill was doubtful. A difficult realistic or complex social play may have doomed Arun’s debut in direction as well as Vivechana’s future as theatre group.
Juloos has great potential for an energetic team of actors to exhibit its talent. The play is sans the protagonist and the antagonist. The crowd is the lead actor; the actors are in supporting cast.
With breathtaking swiftness, the crowd transforms itself into a train, a bus, a music concert, a funeral , a procession and much more. The supporting actors enliven the scenes by assuming various characters.
For instance, I would play five roles in the ‘Juloos’ the play whose duration was barely one hour. The roles were as diverse as toothpowder vender in a train, pop-singer (of Amitabh Bachchan vintage in Yarana) in a music concern and a street Romeo in a running bus. We had a cast of eight characters and each had different roles. Now you can imagine the rapidity with which scenes changed and kinetic energy of the characters that propelled the play.
The play was hugely popular. We staged it across Madhya Pradesh between 1982 and 85.
Incidentally, the play was staged in Bhopal when the city was under the grip of tension duo to communal strife over installation of goddess statue at Peer Gte which was later to be christened as “ Curfew Wali Mata”. Nav Bharat, then the most popular newspaper in Bhopal, carried the news about staging Juloos in box with headline” Curfew Mein Juloos”.
In the hindsight I am tempted to say Juloos had a major role in survival of Vivechana as a thriving theatre group in its days of existential crisis. Therefore, on behalf of all those who acted in the play, I sincerely offer my homage to Badal Sircar.