"I don’t believe in cults and cult figures"

IN the 60s, along with Dharamvir Bharti, Vijay Tendulkar, Girish Karnad and Mohan Rakesh, Badal Sircar was acknowledged as a leading Indian dramatist. Plays by him were being performed everywhere. In mid-70s, everyone was talking about his Third Theatre and he was counted among the creative geniuses of the world. In the late 70s, he was omnipresent, conducting workshops all around. But today nobody is doing his plays, old or new; his alternative stands rejected, as it were. His name evokes only a vague memory of an aborted movement. In the theatre circles, he does not seem to matter.

Even in Calcutta, people are reluctant to talk about him, as if he were an outcaste. Nobody seems to bother if he exists at all. Today he lives in the backstreets of Calcutta, in an eerie-looking house that reminds one of Dickensian locales — dark, dingy and full of huge grey boxes. And this is the man who had given up the lucrative profession of townplanning to be able to serve theatre full time. What went wrong, where and why? Chaman Ahuja tried to find out in an exclusive interview with him.

Some people attribute this virtual ostracism to Badal Da’s marrying in old age a girl who was 40 years younger than him. For Sircar himself, this is a conspiracy: "They don’t want my theatre to be recognised as theatre. In this they have hidden collaborators in the Press — in the critics who, because of their westernised mindset, prefer the establishment theatre."

Perhaps, they are just reacting and rejecting your theatre because you almost destroyed theirs.

This is one of those myths that those people have created about me. True, I no longer do the proscenium theatre but it does not mean that those who do it are my enemies. Proscenium theatre is there; I cannot wish it away or say that it is not a theatre. I tried to create a parallel, alternative theatre which appears to me more relevant in a poor country like ours.

But are you still active? I was told that you have completely withdrawn.

Of course, I am active; only I have moved from the city to the slums, the suburbs and the villages. Shatabdi and some like-minded groups (e.g. Patha-Sena, Arena Theatre, Ritam) continue to perform regularly on fixed days of the month — outside Rabindra Sadan on the first and third Sundays, at the Curzon Park on the second and fourth Saturdays. Working together under the banner of Shatak, they organise festivals of plays; every six months, there is Gram Parikarma in which we move from village to village, singing, dancing and performing plays in the open. These facts my detractors don’t even deign to acknowledge.

But, of late, haven’t you been much less visible? There have been no workshops or follow-up programmes.

For publicity, we need money; for money, more audiences; for larger audiences, larger halls and therefore more money. That will compel us to ticket our shows which is negation of our ideal of a free theatre. Anyway, that would mean competition with commercial groups who, being richer, will force us out. To stay where we are, we have to avoid publicity and competition altogether. Our economics is simple — just voluntary donations in a circulating towel after the show. Our spectators are participants, not buyers. No tickets, no sponsorship, no grants. On the other hand, no halls, no sets, no lighting, no costumes — no expenses, in short. Thus have we survived for 25 years. Our theatre has not just survived, it is thriving. Free theatre, we have realised, is possible provided one doesn’t take theatre professionally — in the sense of a commercial outlook. Our performers are those who work elsewhere for living; they spare time for us because they believe in our philosophy — it’s like working in a political party.

Why are you averse to technology and to help from the government?

The only way the government can help us is by leaving us alone — by letting us do what we want to. As for technology, I am against all mechanical devices for creating gimmicks and in playing the game of hiding. Indeed, I don’t want to cripple my theatre through dependence on anything except the human body. We use human beings to create sets, props — everything.

This stress on human body suggests that yours is a physical theatre.

By no means. Ours is psycho-physical theatre — both body and mind, not just body, as in circus or acrobatics. With us, content is foremost. We use body language not per se, but where we feel it would enhance or enrich the language part of the play. Our workshops are geared to creating the link between thoughts, feelings, and body expressions.

What exactly is the philosophy of your theatre?

I have been trying to evolve an alternative theatre which must exploit the intrinsic power of theatre — direct communication through human beings. Theatre is basically a human event, a live show; a theatre performance is here and now, even when the story is there and then. Since the proscenium stage, to create an illusion of reality, brings between the performers and the spectators the barriers of light and darkness, the human relationship is obviated: with the performers behaving as if the audiences did not exist, the spectators are reduced to the level of Peeping Toms. Cinema goes a step further. The performers are images, not human beings. My theatre tries to bring back into theatre the human beings whose presence is to be felt.

What does all this mean in practical terms?

It means using groups or prototypes more than characters, using words addressed directly to the audiences rather than dialogues between the actors, using physical language as much as the spoken language. Our theatre attempts no ‘illusionism’, tells no story, uses no paraphernalia of the proscenium theatre. In fact, we have no stage at all. In a new production, instead of creating a new set, we just rearrange the seats so as to create mazes of passages and gangways for action within the audiences. Thus placed, the spectators can look into the eyes of the performers as well as the other spectators around. A spectator might speak to the performers and become a performer himself.

Does this knowing and feeling go beyond — to some form of action for social changes?

I don’t think theatre by itself can bring about social changes. But, then, what is it that can? Only mass consciousness — and that is what we are after. It is enough for me if the middle class people realise how callous they are in life — how they watch the sufferings of the people without doing anything. In other words, I want them to become human once again. Their involvement in the performance is the first step towards that process of humanisation. It is like a ritual. Theatre originated from rituals in which the entire community participated. With the advent of realism, theatre lost that ritualistic quality. Those who should have participated became passive spectators. We wish to revive that participative, ritualistic quality of theatre.

How about the aesthetics of theatre as an art?

With us communication is the end and theatre the medium. To me the aesthetics of theatre is nonsense. By aesthetics, people often mean a particular kind of aesthetics — aesthetics for the upper class which is determined by price-tag alone. For me, there can be beauty in simpler, inexpensive things, too.

How about the response, impact and its efficacy?

The response has been great-going by the keenness of the people in inviting us and by the attention with which they see our performances. The impact cannot be measured, it all happens inside. At best, we can hope that our theatre has been affecting, even if marginally, the process of their thinking.

Do the common people, the villagers, understand your theatre at all?

About that, there is no doubt. Perhaps they understand us better than the urban folk. The latter often praise the style, the form, the techniques, but hardly mention the content. When we did Spartacus in Manipur village in a wall-less space with a roof supported by wooden pillars, the invited guests sat on the mats; the common people would not sit and preferred to stand around, on the outer periphery. When the revolt scene came, there was spontaneous applause from the outside and from the people inside. One thing more: our audiences in the parikrama are invariably bigger in size than those in the city shows.

Do you think you have many followers?

I neither follow anybody nor do I expect anybody to follow me blindly. I don’t believe in cults and cult figures. Even in Shatabdi and Shatak, I don’t exploit my seniority to impose my will. We are equals — as in a family situation, with minimum barriers. You may call them my brothers-in-arm, not followers. Let me, once for all, make it clear that I do not regard myself as a pioneer or a leader of any movement. The conducting of workshops was a way of testing my ideas, not for initiating people into my ideology of theatre. Totally independent of me, people in Bihar, in Andhra, in the South as well as in Bengal have been evolving forms and ideologies like ours — similar, not the same. I have not met Gursharan Singh but in his theatre of social issues, the urge is the same. If it is a movement, then it is emerging from the need of the day.

A pan-Indian movement?

I am not interested. For me that word holds no meaning. Anyway, a movement implies unity or continuity in concerns, an outward thrust. I can’t claim that even in my own efforts. At best mine have been voyages in the theatre — continuous travelling with no final destination.