Watch an adaptation of Badal Sircar’s play Saararattir put together by city-based Swapnatara Collective
Actors perform at the rehearsal of the play
One cannot talk about the radical shift in Indian theatre without thinking of the contributions of modern playwright Badal Sircar. Writing in the 1960s and ’70s in a post-Independence India, Sircar had introduced the idea of Third Theatre. He envisioned the possibility of plays that were “neither restricted by the costly and often immobile paraphernalia of the conventional proscenium theatre nor infested by the commerciality and outdated values of the folk theatre.” He wanted to break away from the boundaries between the actor and the spectator, and bring theatre to the streets.
ADVERTISEMENT
Many of Sircar’s plays continue to be performed today in several languages across the country. Mumbai-based Swapnatara Collective has adapted one such play — Saararattir (All Night Longg) — originally written in Bengali. They will showcase it this weekend, and later in March.
The collective was established earlier this year in January by Shimlli Basu with the help of The Drama School Mumbai’s first-ever alumni grant. Through it, she plans to work on new-age, multi-disciplinary plays. Basu trained in acting and theatre-making at the institution from 2018 to 2019, and has since then worked under several theatre personalities like Sunil Shanbag, Padraic Lillis and Amitosh Nagpal. Hailing from a family of musicians, she is also trained in Hindustani and Western classical music and Bengali folk as well. This may explain why she injects the English script with the energy and flavour of Bengali folk.
How does a play written in the 1960s continue to offer something to a contemporary audience? Basu reflects, “We think we’re moving ahead, so ideally, relationship dynamics would also be changing. When I read the play though, I realised that a lack of communication between two partners was at the centre of it. The man has an expectation of an ideal woman and the woman of an ideal man, and it felt like this could be anybody’s story today.”
She reached out to artistes who shared her vision and understood how to translate it into movement, stage lights, and dialogue. She adds, “In the world of Bumble and Tinder, do we know what we’re looking for?” What do we know of our own desires and do we fully comprehend those of our loved ones? With these questions, she tells us that during the process, she refrained from watching other adaptations of the play, and perhaps then carries forward Sircar’s most important legacy — making the play her own.
On: February 26 and March 10; 4 pm and 7.30 pm
At: Harkat Studios, Versova.
Log on to: insider.in
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
