Badal Sircar

20 odd years ago we did a small survey with theatre students to who's the most performed playwrights in this city.

Got theatre students, architecture students to do it and only one Indian playwright in that and that was Badal Sarkar.

And only because of his one acts, because there's this huge one act tradition.

Last 10 to 12 years, the two most performed playwrights in this city, astonishing, it's Ismat and Manto.

Why was, I worked, I've done 167 plays.

I worked with Badal Sarkar.

What was Badal Sarkar's seminal play, Michiel? Means procession in Bengali.

And Badal Sarkar was the inventor of trust exercises in theater.

We had to climb a 17-foot ladder and then jump.

And someone would hold you.

Because while the Bombay years gave me these opportunities and access to mega productions, large productions, very sophisticated production gadgetry.

Calcutta exposed me to the plays written by say Badal Sarkar and many third theater groups where the accent was on physical theater, minimal theater.

And I started looking at that theater very differently then.

And what got me then was although I'd seen productions written by Indian playwrights in Bombay, but the kind of plays like Eva Mindrajeet and Jaloos and Mitch Hill and Hattamala Opare, which translated means on the other side of Hattamala, was very different because it was minimal theater, Spartan accent was on performance, on the actors, not the proscenium, performance in a hall or a gymnasium, And it was really cause-related theater, which was at the heart of theater then.

I'm talking really about theatre in the English language, Ranjit.

In terms of regional theatre, it was a lot more professional and we were seeing some very, very good professional theatre in the regional stage.

That is not to undermine theatre in the English language, but they were happening Parallelly, when you talk about the Badal Sarkar plays or the plays at Chhabildas in Bombay and indeed the Kannada plays written by Simha at that time, they were far more professional in their approach in terms of the fact that Not just in terms of the number of shows, but many of the people were only doing that.

If only doing that, they were complementing that by a career in television as an actor.