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Date/Time
Date(s) - 01/08/2017
6:45 pm - 8:15 pm

Location
Alliance Française du Bengale

Categories


Culture Monks, Best of Kolkata Campus in collaboration with Drishya  & Alliance francaise du Bengale present a tribute to Badal Sircar.

REMEMBERING THE FRAYED 3rd EDGES: DUST TO DUST

An earthquake followed a tsunami in March 2011 led to a meltdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant,  leading to around 1,600 deaths with highly increased probabilities of radiation induced thyroid cancer and other radiation induced mortality in the population which were exposed to nuclear radiation.

Badal Sircar was diagnosed with colon cancer in April 2011 and passed away the very next month in May. His body was donated to NRS Medical College and Hospital for medical research.

Sadanand Menon in his eulogy to Badal Sircar writes :

¨In 1966/67 in his ‘anti-nuclear’ trilogy Baki Itihaas (Remaining History), Tringsha Shatabdi (Thirtieth Century) and Shesh Nei (No End). To date, these remain the only critique in Indian theatre of the country’s demented nuclear pursuits.¨

¨In 1970 … she (Chandralekha) asked me to drop him to his hotel ( in Madras) on my scooter. Immediately Badalda went “No, No, No” and recoiled in protest. Later I learnt he was sitting on a scooter for the first time.  Forty years later, last year, I happened to be on the jury of the International Theatre Festival of Kerala (ITFoK) which selected Badalda for the first Ammanur Puraskaram (2010) for lifetime contribution to theatre. There was a hefty purse with it too. I called Badalda to congratulate him and also to convey that there was provision for an escort to travel along with him for receiving the award. Promptly, from the other end came the exclamation “No, No, No”. I laughed and reminded him of the same protest I had heard forty years ago and said, “Now don’t tell me you are travelling in a plane for the first time ”.

This performance is a tribute to Badal Sircar and the many others who are but a footnote in history, condemned to alterity or folklore which could be attributed to the eugenical motives of a media peddling the totalitarian narrative.

This performance also looks critically at Badals Sircarś & indeed ours conflicted relationship with science & technology particularly nuclear energy and weapons  which in the words of Hannah Arendt is one of ¨the irritating incompatibility between the actual power- of modern man (greater than ever before, great to the point where he might challenge the very existence of his own universe) and the impotence of modern men to live in, and understand the sense of, a world which their own strength has established. ¨

Badal Sircar was 67-year-old when he completed his Masters of Arts in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University in 1992.

It is his indomitable human spirit which urges us to seek the frames which ´should not´ be framed.

About

Venue : Alliance Francaise du Bengale, Park Mansions, Park Street, Kolkata
Date : August 2 (Tuesday) , 2017
Time : 6:45 pm onwards
Entry is free and open to all.

Seed Text: Badal Sircar’s Tringsha Satabdi (Thirtieth Century-1966), Pormanu Bishoye (About Nuclear politics-from the special issue by little magazine Punoruthhan), Kobitar Khonchai Kobita (Poems poking the poems) and Baaki Itihaash (History that Remains-1965)

Additional Text: A Letter to Badalda by Mahesh Elkunchwar and Pradeep Dutta
Video essay, curation and dramaturgy: Parnab Mukherjee
Storytelling, mis-en-scene and silence: Janardan Ghosh

Live Music : Pradip Chattopadhyay
Montage, sound installation and mis-en-place: Sudipta Dawn
Soundscape: Sangat Haldar and Baishmapayan Saha

For more details please click here.