Date/Time
Date(s) - 15/07/2016
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Location
ALLIANCE FRANCAISE DU BENGALE
Categories
Theatre Adda – Park Street Sessions, celebrates Badal Sircar’s 91st birthday through a couple of performance by Parnab Mukherjee and Janardan Ghosh, both eminent theatre practitioners and performers, who have worked closely with Badal Sircar.
Performance Schedule
- Raktakarabi- A dissimilar journey by Parnab Mukherjee
- BEEJ by Janardan Ghosh
- Talk on Badal Sircar by eminent theatre personalities
Remembering the Third Angle
Badal Sircar, born on 15th July, 2016, emerged as a voice for the voiceless. An engineer by profession wooed the world of performance with a new form and ideology. Through his theatre he spoke for the marginal, and created a new pedagogy for the oppressor. His Third Theatre awakened the elite and the intellectuals to be sensitive towards the rural population divided by religion, caste, community, politics and occupation. On the other hand his theatre incessantly tried to empower the rural populace against the discrimination and oppression. A general atmosphere of social and economical justice was encouraged and explored by his theatre. Though he wrote many sarcastic comedies, his unique contribution to theatre was the “Third Theatre”- a perspective from the ground level. This 15th of July we shall remember and revisit the most influential theatre personality from Bengal through a performance and a talk by eminent theatre personalities.
About Badal Sircar
Badal Sircar (15 July 1925 – 13 May 2011), also known as Badal Sarkar, was an influential Indian dramatist and theatre director, most known for his anti-establishment plays during the Naxalite movement in the 1970s and taking theatre out of the proscenium and into public arena, when he founded his own theatre company, Shatabdi in 1976. He wrote more than fifty plays of which Ebong Indrajit, Basi Khabar, and Saari Raat are well known literary pieces, a pioneering figure in street theatre as well as in experimental and contemporary Bengali theatre with his egalitarian “Third Theatre”, he prolifically wrote scripts for his Aanganmanch (courtyard stage) performances, and remains one of the most translated Indian playwrights. Though his early comedies were popular, it was his angst-ridden Ebong Indrajit (And Indrajit) that became a landmark play in Indian theatre. Today, his rise as a prominent playwright in 1960s is seen as the coming of age of Modern Indian playwriting in Bengali, just as Vijay Tendulkar did it in Marathi, Mohan Rakesh in Hindi, and Girish Karnad in Kannada. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1972, Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1968 and the Sangeet Natak Akademi Fellowship- Ratna Sadsya, the highest honour in the performing arts by Govt. of India, in 1997.
Theatre Adda : The Park Street Sessions is a monthly session of performances and other creative presentations. It is hosted by Alliance Francaise du Bengale and Culture Monks.
