There are voyages on various levels in Sircar’s Third Theatre. The most prominent among them is probably from a state of being constantly exploited to a state of holding absolute power and having grasp over the governing mechanism. Unlike the playwrights of the street theatre, Badal Sircar never assumes the role of an agitator. He is rather a propagandist who presents many ideas as an integrated whole providing a complex explanation of the contradictions found in the society. He uses the theatrical space in such a way that the spectators feel that they are part of a maze. It is startling to see the actors moving in the environment created by the spectators between and around. His characters utter brief speeches, so that they can make much use of their bodies and the audience can concentrate on the action. Thus the theatrical language undergoes a thorough change in the plays by Sircar.

And yet, when he was at the peak of his creativity, hailed as a modern master, Badal Sircar quit and went away. He didn’t quit writing and he didn’t go away from theatre. He quit being a ‘playwright’ and abandoned the urban proscenium stage of psychological realism and the box set, a theatre that showcased the actor and pandered to his ego. That sort of theatre often became, in effect, a vehicle for the actor to show off. In Bengal, the urban proscenium theatre was also overtly verbose. When an actor of the calibre of Shombhu Mitra was on stage, no one minded, because it was a pleasure to listen to him deliver Tagore’s lines. With his level of virtuosity, one almost felt it was right to show off. It became a drag when lesser actors pretended they had the stuff [1].

But then, what was the alternative? Sircar couldn’t simply have embraced the rural theatre. He was city-bred and he did not want to be an imposter in the rural theatre. So he created what he called the ‘Third Theatre’. This was a theatre that lived and breathed among the common people that spoke of their lives that cried their tears and dreamed their dreams. This was theatre for social change. Later, he preferred the term ‘free theatre’ to ‘Third Theatre’. Not only was this term less confrontationist, it was also more accurate.

Like Brecht, he is a Marxist but not a spokesperson of any established political party. Sircar’s protagonists can be taken as prototypes of a particular class in a society at a particular period and his plays are left open-ended, so that the spectator assumes the protagonist’s role in the revolt and determination. His characters utter brief speeches, so that they can make much use of their bodies and the audience can concentrate on the action. He used minimal props and improvised dialogue to involve audience into the performance. His actors are constantly on the move, walking, running, dancing or jogging [2]. Sircar creates a most bewildering environment with the bodies, backs, faces and profiles of the spectators.

Sircar and his group Satabdi performed their plays anywhere-in large rooms or halls, in the open, in fields, in parks and gardens. This was ‘free’ theatre. It required no ticket to see it and it required very little money to do. More importantly, it was free in the sense of being free of constraints and obligations. It was insolent, unafraid to speak its mind. What this theatre did require, though, was imagination. Too much of what goes in the name of ‘street theatre’ (particularly today, when the NGOs have appropriated the form to a great extent) is patronising, artistically weak, imaginatively barren and plain boring. Sircar’s theatre was never barren, intellectually or aesthetically. You might or might not agree with him, but you could not dismiss his theatre. In plays such as Bashi Khobor (Basi Khabar, ‘Stale News’, 1978) and Bhoma (1979), Satabdi created some of the finest instances of ‘physical theatre’ in India [3].

In other words, in Sircar’s work, writing, directing and acting in plays became seamless parts of the larger process of creating theatre. And while he continued writing plays, the act of creating theatre involved, more and more, the reconfiguration of the performance space and manipulation of actors’ bodies and voices to create meaning. Dialogue within the group became for him as important as dialogue in the play and dialogue with the audience. Initially, Sircar was sceptical about the audience taking to his plays, which were more complex and sophisticated than the average street theatre being performed there. But he was to be surprised. Over time, a serious and regular theatre going audience developed at Surendranath Park.

Ideologically, it is a little hard to characterise Badal Sircar’s theatre. He started with light hearted comedies (Ballabhpurer Rupkatha being one of the best known and is still popular), then went on to express the angst and rootlessness of the urban middle class in his classic plays and eventually, in his post-proscenium phase, he became more consciously anti-establishment. However, a certain sort of political ambivalence is inscribed into his plays and in fact into his dramaturgy itself-in the sense that the non-verbal can just as easily ‘flatten’ meaning and equalise opposites. His theatre could was, variously, angry, nihilist, hopeful and deeply humanist. He didn’t delude himself that he could, in some magical way, transcend his class roots simply by mouthing radical slogans. In talking about his creative journey, he recounts the following.

‘‘But should we make a play on the Santhal revolt of 1855-56, taking roles of Santhals and the oppressors? The answer was-no. Then what? We shall show it from our point of view, that is, the point of view of a contemporary person belonging to the city-br.ed, educated middle class community. Why? Because we want to link that revolt to the present-day reality [4]’’.

Sircar’s relations with the organised left remained awkward at best. Utpal Dutt, Sircar’s near exact contemporary and member of the CPI (M), hardly ever spoke kindly of Third Theatre. Perhaps because he was familiar with Dutt’s style, which was somewhat robust and highly polemical, to the best of my knowledge, Sircar didn’t respond to Dutt in kind. Some of his less patient followers did, however and the mutual suspicion hardened over the years. This was unfortunate, because Sircar made a tremendous contribution by taking quality theatre to non-formal spaces. He was a key figure in what Safdar Hashmi called the ‘democratisation of Indian theatre’ [5].

Above all, what Badal Sircar did was to seed practice and train practitioners. This is a part of his legacy that has not been appreciated enough. But through the 1970s, he travelled all over the country, holding workshops in the techniques he was exploring. The Kannada left-wing theatre group Samudaya (the theatre director Prasanna was associated with it, as was, though not so centrally, Karanth) invited Satabdi for a performance and followed it up with a two week workshop with Sircar in Kumbulgod. This led directly to Samudaya taking up street theatre in 1978 [6]. Samudaya went on to become one of the finest exponents of street theatre in the coming years.

Or take the case of the Manipuri director, H. Kanhailal. Expelled from the National School of Drama because he couldn’t manage either the ‘high’ Hindi expected of him, nor very good English, Kanhailal found his own unique idiom after a workshop with Sircar. It was Sircar who introduced the non-verbal, physical idiom to Manipuri theatre [7]. Sircar had got the psycho-physical exercises of the avant-garde Euro-American theatre from the Polish director and theorist Jerzy Grotowsky. 

About a decade before his death, Sircar had an accident, which had severe implications on his physical ability to act in or direct plays. What he achieved, though, was to enter into creative, nurturing collaborative relationships with other theatre groups active in and around Kolkata. Some of these groups folded up fast, but two had a long life-Ayna (founded 1978) and Pathasena (founded 1979). Both these groups considered Sircar their mentor and he played an active role in training them and sometimes also directing plays for them. Along with them Satabdi is among the handful of theatre groups continuing down the path of Third Theatre-“with its sociopolitical breadth and dramatic vision, it was the one and only such theatre movement in the country,” says art and theatre critic Samik Bandyopadhyay. “Badal babu pioneered a movement that was really needed. He would later call Third Theatre free theatre and it set theatre free in every sense of the term [8],” adds Bandyopadhyay. 

Abiding by the “flexible, portable and inexpensive” tenets of Third Theatre, the group has shunned the proscenium stage, fame and corporate sponsorships to take its theatre to the masses, performing in open fields, villages, slums and at roadside venues, relying entirely on donations.

 “We can carry our theatre in a side-bag whereas for a proscenium theatre to travel, you’ll need at least a small truck to carry things around [9],” says a member. Sircar, who had already been awarded the prestigious Sangeet Natak Akademi and Padma Shri for landmark proscenium plays like Ebong Indrajit, Bollovpurer Rupkatha, Baaki Itihaash and Pagla Ghoda, imagined theatre outside the restrictive boundaries of the proscenium stage-a format that distanced the audience from the actor through its elevated stage, blinding lights, expensive production values and hierarchical sitting arrangements decided by ticket value, with commercial concerns dictating content. And when he renounced the proscenium stage to embark on his first Third Theatre production, Spartacus, in 1972, the group started travelling to its audience, rather than the other way round.

Sacrificing theatrical props, Sircar and Satabdi reached out to new audiences. Initially, Satabdi, founded in 1967, started performing in what Sircar called the angan mancha-spaces like rooms, halls and courtyards. It soon moved on to mukta mancha-open-air, unbounded spaces like parks, streets, slums, fields, at factory gates and in villages. In 1976, Satabdi started giving free performances at central Kolkata’s Curzon Park. About the same time, it began its gram parikrama (village visits), travelling to rural areas, performing for those who were often the subjects of Sircar’s writing. This move away from the city stage was participatory in more ways than one. Satabdi members would charge no fee, moving around with a chador (sheet) collecting voluntary contributions from villagers and city audiences. 

“When our theatre became free, the contributions that audiences made were neither donation nor price. That is their participation. Which is why even when we performed at poverty-stricken places we would go around with the chador. Why should we deny them the chance to participate [10]?” Sircar explained to theatre personality Adhrish Biswas in an interview, republished earlier this year by the publishing house Guruchandali in a 31-page booklet, Michhilye Badal Sircar-the interview had initially appeared in the Amritalok magazine in 1996.

In the same interview, Sircar says Bandyopadhyay was his only supporter when he faced criticism from the proscenium theatre society in Kolkata-an entire issue of a popular theatre bulletin was devoted to criticizing Sircar’s Third Theatre. 

“In the early 1970s, the signs were clear that India was moving towards the Emergency. A radical, political theatre had to function and proscenium, which was dependent on money and capital, lacked an independent political voice. Sircar started this theatre which was not dependent on economics [11],” says Bandyopadhyay. Even when Sudeb Sinha shot a documentary film on Sircar, A Face In The Procession, which was completed in 2013, he found very few personalities from Kolkata’s vibrant proscenium theatre circuit willing to talk about Sircar; symptomatic of the systemic neglect that Sircar’s Third Theatre work has faced in Bengal.

This was very different from the eulogies that flowed generously from doyens of the theatre world in other parts. Appreciation from the likes of Girish Karnad, Amol Palekar, Sudhir Mishra, Naseeruddin Shah, Mira Nair, Mohan Agashe, Shreeram Lagoo, Rohini Hattangadi, Amrish Puri, Satyadev Dubey and Makarand Sathe is indicative of the extent of Sircar’s influence. Karnad notes that Ebong Indrajit taught him fluidity between scenes, Dubey went to the extent of claiming that “in every play I’ve written and in every situation created, Indrajit dominates”, while Mishra says Sircar provokes and dismantles his beliefs. 

“I’m unable to compromise because Badal babu sits inside my head [12],” he adds.

Through his writings and public statements, Sircar was often critical of proscenium theatre. 

“Back then, proscenium theatre in Bengal was upholding a left, radical position in terms of ideology. They were not prepared to take any criticism. They would contend that the exposure that Badal babu got to American playwrights like Richard Schechner and Judith Malina made Third Theatre a derivative form and one that was importing a culture considered as obscene and reactionary in Bengal [13],” says Bandyopadhyay. In the rejection of proscenium-what he would define as second theatre, India’s indigenous folk theatre being the first-Sircar was also throwing out the Victorian influences of the proscenium stage while establishing a form that spoke up against militarism, state-sponsored violence, exploitation, torture of the common man and the marginalized, using Indian motifs.

In Voyages in the Theatre -a book encapsulating Sircar’s 1992 Shri Ram Memorial Lectures in New Delhi-the actor-director talks about his lesser-known, interactive play Muktamela. In it, spectators are allowed into the venue, a Kolkata house, only to be asked provocative and insulting questions by Satabdi members on their income and marital life. They are frisked and ordered around before being let into a terrace room where the play portrays different situations, from abject greed to ear-splitting screams from the tortured. 

“We of the middle classes like to believe that we are free, but in reality we have to suffer the indignities of bondage and restrictions quite often. Our idea was to put the spectators in a situation which would remind them of those indignities through a direct theatrical experience [14],” Sircar explained. The formulation of a Third Theatre grew out of Sircar’s dissatisfaction with Conditions of the proscenium stage. Conventional proscenium theatre’s over-dependence on expensive paraphernalia which has no relevance in the theatre was one of the reasons for Sircar’s disillusionment with the format. According to him sets, props and costumes are used to create illusion of reality, but spectators have come to theatre ready to use their imagination and they are prepared to accept the stage as a stage. This condition of the proscenium theatre hits the direct communication between the performer and spectator. As theatre is a live-show, as in theatre live person communicates directly to another live person; this is the fundamental characteristic of the theatre which makes theatre differ from other art forms. Secondly bright lighting that blanks out audiences where audience-actor interaction is impossible because it separates performers and audience. Thirdly the sitting arrangement made in proscenium theatre i.e. raised stages, stage-facing sitting arranged according to ticket prices these were other issues he had problems with.

Satabdi first moved off the elevated platform to perform in rooms. This was alternately called “intimate theatre” or ‘Anganmanch’ (an angan being an indoor courtyard, a decidedly intimate space in community life). In 1972 Satabdi performed Spartacus, its first ‘Anganmanch’ piece, presented in a room at Kolkata’s Academy of Fine Arts, itself an established venue of conventional theatre. This was his first major experiment in the direction of Third Theatre. The other plays specially written for Third theatre are Michhil (Procession), Bhoma and Basi Khabar (Stale News). Michhil, performed in 1974, two years after Spartacus, in Ramchandrapur, a village in West Bengal, was the first play designed entirely for the open air. Sircar then did an experimental production of Gour Kishore Ghosh's Sagina Mahato which Satabdi had earlier enacted within the proscenium format when he realized the need to leave the proscenium theatre. Sircar evinces.

"With normal room-lights, we performed not by merely facing our audience, but also on' their sides and sometimes switching to the background, aptly, sharing space with them. Nearly everyone, who had previously seen Sagina, agreed that the play was far more effective in the reoriented scheme [15].”

By the early ’70s Satabdi’s proscenium productions were unsustainable financially as well as artistically-the group could not afford to rent a theatre to show their work. Unwilling to give in to the stasis, Sircar started questioning the very concept of theatre. Interestingly many others at the time, in both Bengal and elsewhere, were experiencing similar dissatisfactions with the proscenium stage. But Sircar’s search of space brought him different answers. He realized that while cinema was a popular medium and could show much more than theatre, it lacked one fundamental element that was inherent to the theatre-liveness. He explains,

“Communication is essential in every art form; the artist communicates to other people through literature, music, painting and acting. But the methods of communication are different. A writer writes-he does not have to be present when his writing is being read. So it is with the painter and the sculptor. In cinema, the film artists do not have to be present when the film is being projected. But in the theatre, the performers have to be present when the communication takes place. This is a fundamental difference. Theatre is a live show, cinema is not. In theatre, communication is direct; in cinema it is through images [16]”.

Sircar and his group realized that if liveness was definitive, then the proscenium arrangement was entirely unsatisfactory. Instead of enhancing performer spectator interactions by removing barriers, the proscenium theatre only impeded it by creating obstacles through artificial set-ups of lighting and seating. Rather than pretend the audience did not exist, Sircar saw a need to inhere the audience in the performance. The spectator demands in the new theatre not an illusion of reality, but the reality itself, the reality of the presence of the performer. This meant that the actor and spectator had to share the same space and acknowledge each other’s presence. Direct communication was to become the cardinal feature of the Third Theatre.

“Theatre can show very little, but whatever it can show is here, now. The Performers and the spectators come to the same place, on the same day, at the same time; otherwise the event of theatre will not happen. [...] That is the strength. That should be emphasized [17].”

This new theatre depended entirely on acting-the performer’s body on the one hand and the spectator’s imagination on the other. As only human presence was to be emphasized, the other paraphernalia of the theatre became superfluous. Elaborate sets were no longer possible; lighting was general and/or minimal. Costumes could be incorporated to some extent but more for symbolic signification. Makeup was now superfluous since the actor and spectator were in such close proximity. These changes did not come to Satabdi all at once. They were wrought gradually through a policy of trial and error.

“We realized that if we do theatre we are doing away with all the costly and heavy items of theatre. [...] So gradually a flexible, portable and inexpensive theatre is being created. Flexible and portable, therefore inexpensive. Flexible means we can do it in any condition. Portable-we can carry our theatre easily to places where we want to perform. We don’t have to charge any money for that you see. Voluntary donations we will do. So the basis of free theatre is laid [18]”.

Third Theatre had turned into “free theatre” in three ways: First, there was free expression it promoted direct and therefore uninhibited communication; second, it was free from the paraphernalia of conventional theatre; and last, it was offered at no cost to the audience. A logical development leading to truly free theatre was the gram ‘parikrama’. A true theatre of the people therefore would have to go where the majority of the population lived. Satabdi went on its first parikrama in 1986 for three days and two nights. It has since been trying to undertake at least two such tours every year. Free theatre is also often loosely used synonymously with street theatre because both are flexible, portable and inexpensive. And while he has no objections to the conflation per se, Sircar clarifies the distinction. He and other members of Satabdi define street theatre as a quickly created short performance, which has some topical value. So:

“Street theatre in a way is Third Theatre. But all Third Theatre is not street theatre [19]”.

Sircar’s innovations in the use of public space have had a profound impact on Indian theatre. Even though experimentation for its own sake was never his intention, his example encouraged many others to explore different styles. But if this purposeful theatre was to survive, it required more than just meddlers interested in its form. What was needed to carry Third Theatre forward was a group of committed practitioners who were invested in its content. After the scripts for change were written, a movement ensued.

“The entire process of change involves a philosophy and [I] believe that the new language can only be established if it takes the shape of a movement [20]”.

Third theatre is the fusion of two theatres rural and the urban theatre. In the exploration Sircar had seen the inherent features of folk theatre i.e. live performer and direct communication technique. And the emphasis on the performers body rather than the set- ups and mechanical devices from the proscenium theatre. Thus Sircar combined these features of the rural and the urban theatre and made the third theatre as the synthesis of these two theatres.

In exploration of the theatre Sircar came to realize that the theatre is a human act. Experience is the key word in every art and theatre is also a kind of art, where people come to have experience. According to Badal Sircar theatre should be a collective exercise to awaken and enhance the social consciousness of participants, including the viewers. So he preferred doing theatre in the open air where audience can participate. Sircar has said of his own theatre.

“There is no separate stage-the performance is on the floor; that is the Performers and the spectators are within the same environment. [...] This is intimate theatre. The performers can see the spectator clearly, Can approach him individually, can whisper in his ears, can even touch him if he wants [21]”.

Third theatre is portable, because it can be moved anywhere. As it does not require heavy set-up, spotlight, furniture, costumes etc. so it becomes portable. Third theatre is flexible because plays can be performed anywhere, it does not require stage. A theatre which can go to where the people are – without waiting for them to come to a specified place. Since it reduced the cost of theatre and it can be offered at freely, so it is inexpensive. Sircar believed in human relationship not in the buyer and seller relationship. He believed that theatre is a human act; it is art not the source of earning money.

In the Third theatre set -ups are made of collective human act. Emphasis is totally given on the human body. For the free flow of action games exercises are taken in the workshops. Instead of imitating certain stage voices and movements, the performers are taught to giving more from within, replacing the fake in theatre by a true expression of the self. Freeing them from the constraints of realistic depiction, Sircar encouraged the performers to use movements, rhythm, mime, formations and contortions to express them physically. Sudhanva Deshpande aptly assesses Sircar’s contribution to changing the anatomy of the Indian actor:

“He more than anyone else pioneered the play without the text. It was the technique of using the actor as text. The body of the actor becomes the text [22].”

The result is a Spartan production which is an ideological position. The stand of course is that “I will use nothing else because that is the essential thing.”

Third theatre exhibits an openness and receptivity. Sircar was influenced both Indian folk theatre and western experimental theatre. Sircar adopted direct communication technique and live performance from the Indian folk theatre. Open performance and emphasis on the performer’s body from the western theatre. Thus he combined these features and made the Third theatre. Sircar himself admits that he learned the most from observing and sometimes working with practitioners like Jerzy Grotowski, Joan MacIntosh, Judith Malina, Julian Beck and Richard Schechner. But mere observing is other thing; he has not imitated them. Third or free theatre can never be like Grotowski’s physical theatre because, Sircar says, those conditions of performance are simply not available in India.

Sircar focused on doing theatre than writing plays, because he had profound knowledge of Indian society where physical, psychological, cultural, mental, political and spiritual dichotomies reclined. To bring about a change Sircar used theatre as a tool. He was conscious that the dichotomy in the cultural field cannot be removed without a fundamental change in the socio-economic situation and he knew that it cannot be done through theatre. Though he knew that theatre by itself can never change the society, he firmly believes that theatre can be one of the many facets of a movement that is needed to bring about the desirable change and that makes the idea of Third Theatre, a theatre to bring about meaningful change.

1. Velmani, N. “Drama in Indian Writing in English-Tradition and Modernity.” Language in India, vol. 13, no. 6, June 2013, www.languageinindia.com. Web. December 2015.

2. Gray, Ronald D. Brecht, the Dramatist. Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1976. Print, p. 44.

3. Sarcar, Badal. Voyage in the Theatre: Shri Ram Memorial Lectures. Kolkata: Seagull, 1992. Print, p. 36.

4. Sircar, Badal. The Third Theatre. Kolkata: Seagull, 1978. Print, p. 77.

5. Tandon, Neeru. Perspectives and Challenges in Indian-English Drama. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2002. Print, p. 98.

6. Sircar, Badal, et al. Three Plays: Procession, Bhoma, Stale News. Translated by Samik Bandyopadhyay, Kolkata: Seagull, 1983. Print, p. 49.

7. Sircar, Badal, et al. Two Plays: Indian History Made Easy, Life of Bagala. Translated by Subhendu Sarkar, Kolkata: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print, p. 22.

8. Deshpande, Sudhanva. “The Outsider: Badal Sircar (1925–2011).” Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal, ISSN 2278-9529, Newsclick, www.galaxyimrj.com, May 2011. Web. December 2015.

9. Deshpande, Sudhanva. LeftWord Books. Edited by Sudhanva Deshpande, 2015. Web. December 2015.

10. Biswas, Adhrish. Michileye Badal Sircar. Kolkata: Guruchandali, 1996. Print, p. 22.

11. Biswas, Adhrish. Michileye Badal Sircar. Kolkata: Guruchandali, 1996. Print, p. 23.

12. Bharucha, Rustom. The Theatre of Kanhailal: Pebet and Memoirs of Africa. Gung Chil: Kolkata, 1992. Print, p. 84.

13. Pani, Narendar. Staging a Change. Dhriti: Bangalore, 1979. Print, pp. 65–68.

14. Bartholomew, Rati. “Samudaya’s Jatha, Karnataka.” The Drama Review, vol. 6, nos. 1–2, Fall 1983, New Delhi. Print, p. 38.

15. Deshpande, Sudhanva. “The Outsider: Badal Sircar (1925–2011).” Galaxy: International Multidisciplinary Research Journal, ISSN 2278-9529, Newsclick, www.galaxyimrj.com, May 2011. Web. December 2015.

16. Mitra, Shayoni. “Badal Sircar: Scripting a Movement.” The Drama Review, vol. 48, no. 3, Fall 2004, New Delhi. Print, p. 53.

17. Tandon, Neeru. Perspectives and Challenges in Indian-English Drama. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2002. Print, p. 55.

18. Sircar, Badal, et al. Two Plays: Indian History Made Easy, Life of Bagala. Translated by Subhendu Sarkar, Kolkata: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print, p. 71.

19. Bharucha, Rustom. Rehearsals of Revolution: The Political Theatre of Bengal. Medha: Kolkata, 1983. Print, pp. 111–113.

20. Bharucha, Rustom. Rehearsals of Revolution: The Political Theatre of Bengal. Medha: Kolkata, 1983. Print, p. 86.

21. Pani, Narendar. Staging a Change. Dhriti: Bangalore, 1979. Print, pp. 65–68.

22. Sarcar, Badal. Voyage in the Theatre: Shri Ram Memorial Lectures. Kolkata: Seagull, 1992. Print, p. 21.