Appreciating Tanvir
Jayanthi LIYANAGE
A panel discussion on life and works of Indian playwright Habib
Tanvir was held in Indian Cultural Centre, Colombo, on August 21.
Sri Lankan playwright Parakrama Niriella, founder and director of
'Jana Karaliya' (mobile theatre), who produced two adaptations of
Tanvir's masterpiece 'Charandas Chor' (Charandas the thief) as 'Charandas'
in Sinhala and Tamil, introduced Tanvir to the audience. An extract of a
documentary made on Tanvir, and titled 'My village is theatre, my name
is Habib' was also shown. Tanvir was born in September, 1923 in Raipur
town in the state Chhattisgarh, enjoyed a life span of 86 years carving
for himself an indelible period of 64 years in the Indian theatre arts,
and died on June 28 this year.
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Habib Tanvir. |
In 1977, Tanvir came to Sri Lanka to select participants for a
workshop on folk arts he was going to conduct in Raipur, aided by the
Asian Cultural Forum on Development. He met Dhamma Jagoda and Gamini
Hattotuwegama and also came to see Niriella's play 'Sekkuwa,' travelling
in bus to Polgahawela where it was staged. Somalatha Subasinghe, K.S.
Fernando, Cyril Wickramage and Niriella were selected for the workshop
in 1978. Niriella had the opportunity see Tanvir's three famous plays
Charandas Chor (1975), Agra Bazaar (1954) and Mitti Ki Gadi (The Clay
Cart)(1958). The plays were shown in distant villages, with no stage or
curtains, using only general lighting and a speaker to throw voices at
the audience. In Edinburgh Theatre Festival in England,, Charandas Chor
won a Fringe First Award. The three plays, from the repertoire of 15
plays he had produced, are continually shown in India for the past 30
years.
After Agra Bazaar, a radical production drawing on popular culture of
song and dance and using genuine folk actors on stage, Tanvir earned a
scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) in London. He
stopped it short and moved to Bristol Old Vic Theatre to study directing
which also he abandoned after some time. The understanding of theatre
arts he gained made him want to use Indian traditions to develop a new
tradition of theatre. He travelled in Europe watching plays and saw a
similarity between the Bertold Brecht approach to plays and the Indian
folk theatre approach. On his return to India, using folk theatre to
bring fresh life to Sanskrit classic Mrichakatika, he produced Mitti Ki
Gadi. In 1959, he formed Naya Theatre with his wife, Moneeka Mishra. He
wanted to use more from Chhattisgarh folk actors and their traditions.
But these illiterate actors could not be coached in Hindi and to use the
western guidelines of moving on stage. The lure of the folk actors lay
in their freedom to improvise and interact with the audience. In 1970s,
Tanvir dropped Hindi and allowed his actors to improvise in
Chhattisgarhi dialect. He also explored local nacha folk comedies and
using nacha stories and adding improvised scenes and new songs, he
created the blend of form and style that was to be his hallmark in
theatre. This was how Chrandas Chor emerged.
"I am not a slave to folk traditions," Tanvir is supposed to have
articulated. "I do not go after folk theatre models. I only go after
folk actors. While I use my free thinking ability with these actors, a
shape and style of a play begin to emerge."
Tanvir had seen a female acrobat showing her prowess on streets and
had her perform in Agra Bazaar to overwhelming audience applause. He
required two Sanyasis to sing in a play and obtained two real Sanyasis
from streets to act on the stage. Likewise, with such additions,
Chanrandas Chor had 72 actors and Agra Bazzar had 52.
The discoveries of Tanvir in theatre arts are important to us who are
imprisoned in a procenium stage, to move on to the mobile theatre for a
larger audience, Niriella said.
Death had not lain Tanvir in peace. The play Charandas Chor has now
been banned in the provincial state of Chhattisgarh by Chief Minister
Ramon Singh, as it is seen as being disrespectful towards a personality
held in eminence by an ethnic group in the province. This move has drawn
protests from Indian artistes.
Dharmasiri Bandaranayake, film director and playwright said that to
say that Tanvir got fed up of RADA training is to support extremists in
Sri Lanka, It could be said that he was fatigued. "Sri Lanka is now at a
stage in which we cannot obtain the knowledge of highly educated people
in other countries. We cannot speak about the development they have
acquired." Tanvir loved the European theatre as the plays he directed
during his last years have come from Shakespeare, Moliere, Garcia Lorca,
Bertold Brecht and Oscar Wild. He turned to folk theatre not to
resurrect it but to draw from it. "We can draw similarities between
Tanvir and late Prof. Ediriweera Sarachchandra. Now, some people oppose
doing translated drama and say only originals should be done,. We should
not strengthen the hand of such fundamentalists." Tanvir had been
criticised for expressing disagreement with fundamentalists in his
plays.
Tanvirm was nurtured in left-wing politics and was a member of Rajya
Sabah from 1972 to 1978. "He does not do politics, only plays, "people
complained.
He acted in Richard Attenborough' film Gandhi in 1982. Tanvir
received many awards in arts, including the Sangeet Natak Akademi Award
in 1969, Padma Shri in 1983, Kalidas Samman in 1990 and a Sangeet Natak
Akademi Fellowship in 1996. |
