To Stage or Not to Stage Tagore: Performing Tagore's Plays

435 Pages·2022·18.09 MB·English

by  Rajdeep Konar

To Stage or Not to Stage Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore (1861‒1941) was a prolific playwright with more
than thirty plays to his credit. He is also known for his life-long, passionate
engagement with theatre, first at Jorasanko and then at Santiniketan, in
multiple roles as actor, director, singer, musician. However, during his own
life-time and even after his demise, his experimental plays have proved
challenging for directors to stage. Time and again they have been written
off as unstageable by prominent theatre makers. Further complications
have emerged from the presence of a spectre of authority around Tagore
and his plays often promoted by Visva-Bharati, the institution he founded
and which held the copyright of his works till 2001. This book travels
through time and space intending to untangle the enigma presented by
Tagore’s plays. The book on one hand immerses itself into the archive of
Tagore’s plays and his dramaturgy of them in order to problematize the ways
in which they have been interpreted. On the other, it also engages with
productions of Tagore’s plays during and after his life-time to understand
the challenges directors have faced while staging them and the strategies
they have embraced to circumvent such challenges. While performing a
subjective critical reading of the Tagore theatre-archive, an underlying
objective of the book remains to understand the very concept of the
archive, as it manifests itself in contemporary dramatic theatre.
Rajdeep Konar is currently Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of
Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi. He was born and brought
up in Santiniketan and has received his early education at Visva-Bharati,
the institution set up by poet/educationist Rabindranath Tagore. For his
doctoral project completed at School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal
Nehru University he has worked on the relationship between ‘theatre’ and
the ‘archive’ through a case study of productions of Rabindranath Tagore’s
plays. He has been part of conceptualization and execution of multiple
performances at Santiniketan, Kolkata and New Delhi. For the past few
years, he has been working closely with the Kolkata based blind theatre
group Anyadesh, documenting their work as well as functioning as a sighted
facilitator. He has recently received a grant from India Foundation for
the Arts, Bangalore to prepare a documentary monograph on the group.
His articles have appeared in reputed journals like Visva-Bharati Quarterly,
Economic & Political Weekly and Theatre Research International.
To Stage or

Not to Stage Tagore

Performing Tagore’s Plays

RAJDEEP KONAR
First published 2023
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Rajdeep Konar and Social Science Press
The right of Rajdeep Konar to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh,
Pakistan or Bhutan)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 9781032389257 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032389264 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003347491 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003347491
Typeset in Bembo LT Std
by Manmohan Kumar, Delhi 110035
Contents
List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgements xi

Introduction xv

I. Sokher Theatre at Thakurbari: Inception and 1

Formative Experiments

Sokh: A Mode of Art Pratice 3

Cultural Hybridity at Thakurbari 7

Naba Natak: First Major Production at the 19

Jorasanko Theatre

Balmiki Protibha: A Career in Theatre Unveils 45

II. Freedom to Play: Exploring a New Language 65

of Theatre at Santiniketan

Rangmancha: The Lacuna of a Treatise and the Enigma 67

of the Hiatus

Sarodotsav: A New Historicality 75

Textual Departures 78

Performative Departures 86

III. Where Opposites Meet: Tagore in the Public 120

Theatre of Bengal

Early Commercial Theatre in Bengal 124
vi Contents
Jyotirindranath and Rabindranath: Formal Exchanges 128

Rabindranath and the Art Theatre Ltd.: Breaking of 140

the Ice

Tagore and Bhaduri: The Fortuitous Friendship 161

IV. Performing the Archive: Bohurupee’s 188

Raktakarabi (1954)

Claims and Counter-Claims of Authorship 190

Blood or Oleander: Symbolic or Real? 198

Inquiring into Tagore’s Symbolist Plays 204

A Dr amaturgy of Textual Deconstruction 219

A Ta gorean Idea of Indian Theatre 239

V. Dramaturgy as Contingent Encounter: 247

Dakghar outside Bengal

Dakghar: Questions Realting to Translation and the 250

Popularity of the Play

Kanhailal’s Dakghar: Lyrical Dramaturgy in the 255

Manipuri Context

Dakghar at the Abbey: Cultural Sterotypes, Friendship, 270

Faux Pas and Unequal Power Relations

Jill Parvin’s The Post Office: Re-Connecting through 299

Re-Enactment

Conclusion 319

Appendix A: Notes on Major Tagore Plays Discussed 339

Appendix B: Biographical Notes 348

Bibliography 366

Index 383
List of Illustrations

Figure 1: Tagore as Balmiki standing (I) in Balmiki Protibha 45
performance at Jorasanko, 1891
Figure 2: Tagore as Balmiki sitting/reclining in Balmiki 46
Protibha performance at Jorasanko, 1891
Figure 3: Tagore as Andha Baul in Phalguni performance 53
at Santiniketan, 1916
Figure 4: Tagore as Balmiki, Standing (II) in Balmiki 54
Protibha performance at Jorasanko, 1891
Figure 5: Stage for Natir Puja performance at Calcutta, 88
1927
Figure 6: Rabindranath, Dinendranath and Ashamukul 91
Das in a scene from Dakghar performance at Jorasanko,
1917
Figure 7: Print advertisement for Raja O Rani, 1897 137
Figure 8: Durgadas Bandyopadhyay as Purna in 146
Chirakumar Sabha performance, 1925
Figure 9: Ahindra Choudhury as Chandra babu in 149
Chirakumar Sabha performance, 1925
Figure 10: Ahindra Choudhury (left) and Sisir Kumar 155
Bhaduri
viii List of Illustrations
Figure 11: Ahindra Choudhury as Jatin in Grihaprabesh 157
performance, 1925
Figure 12: Rabindranath as Jaisingha in Bisarjan 174
performance, 1923
Figure 13: The Set Design for Bohurupee Raktakarabi 223
production by Khaled Choudhury, 1954
Figure 14: Bishu Pagol and Nandini sitting in front of 224
the King’s door designed following Gaganendranath’s
painting in the Raktakarabi performance, 1954
Figure 15: Painting by Gaganendranath in the cover 226
page to the Raktakarabi play, published in Visva-Bharati
Quarterly, 1924
Figure 16: Costume design sketch for the character 229
of the King by Khaled Choudhury for Bohurupee’s
Raktakarabi, 1954
Figure 17: Actors in Tasher Desh performance with 231
Tagore, 1933
Figure 18: A moment from sections with non-verbal 261
dramaturgy in Dakghar performance, 2006
Figure 19: Madhab Dutta, Amal and Thakurda in a 264
moment from the sections with verbal dramaturgy in
Dakghar performance, 2006
Figure 20: Death Scene with Amal and the Priest in 266
Dakghar performance, 2016
Figure 21: The old Abbey Theatre from the outside, 1904 272
Figure 22: Tagore portrait by William Rothenstein 277
accompanying the Gitanjali publication, 1913
Figure 23: A virtual reconstruction of the old Abbey 283
inside done as a part of a project by the Trinity College,
Dublin, 2011
Figure 24: The programme for the Abbey Theatre 284
Post Office performance, 1913
List of Illustrations ix
Figure 25: The cover page of the programme for 298
Parvin’s The Post Office, 1993
Figure 26: The invitation for Korczak’s The Post Office, 306
1942
Figure 27: Korczak with the music team for The Post 309
Office production, 1942
Figure 28: Thakurda telling Amal stories of the mysterious 313
lands in Parvin’s The Post Office production, 1993
Figure 29: The palanquin used in the last scene of 316
Parvin’s The Post Office, 1993