Badal Sircar  (English, Hardcover, Wadikar Shailaja B.)

Badal Sircar: People’s Playwright throws light on Sircar’s unequitable contribution to Indian theatre. He has not only given it a new dimension but also has created his own theatre, the “People’s Theatre”—it has been created for people and by people to bring about a change in the thinking modes of people. Therefore, at Sircar’s hand, theatre really becomes a means of social reform. The book discusses how Badal Sircar as a playwright-director, theorist, teacher and mentor challenged the established norms and concepts of writing and performance of a play. The critical study of the proscenium plays portrays the image of an angry young man, his profound sense of guilt for turning away from the responsibilities, the absurdity of the contemporary society and existence of a man in the present war-ridden scenario, and the analysis of the plays in the Third Theatre shows—Sircar’s successful efforts to erase the line between the performers and spectators, to make the spectators the architecture of action and to create in them the feeling of community, that is, a sense of “we”.