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 arisen 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 them. 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.
Author(s): Rajdeep Konar
Publisher: Routledge/Social Science Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 434
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter I: Sokher Theatre at Thakurbari: Inception and Formative Experiments
Sokh: A Mode of Art Pratice
Cultural Hybridity at Thakurbari
Naba Natak: First Major Production at the Jorasanko Theatre
Balmiki Protibha: A Career in Theatre Unveils
Chapter II: Freedom to Play: Exploring a New Language of Theatre at Santiniketan
Rangmancha: The Lacuna of a Treatise and the Enigma of the Hiatus
Sarodotsav: A New Historicality
Textual Departures
Performative Departures
Chapter III: Where Opposites Meet: Tagore in the Public Theatre of Bengal
Early Commercial Theatre in Bengal
Jyotirindranath and Rabindranath: Formal Exchanges
Rabindranath and the Art Theatre Ltd.: Breaking of the Ice
Tagore and Bhaduri: The Fortuitous Friendship
Chapter IV: Performing the Archive: Bohurupee’s Raktakarabi (1954)
Claims and Counter-Claims of Authorship
Blood or Oleander: Symbolic or Real?
Inquiring into Tagore’s Symbolist Plays
A Dramaturgy of Textual Deconstruction
A Tagorean Idea of Indian Theatre
Chapter V: Dramaturgy as Contingent Encounter: Dakghar outside Bengal
Dakghar: Questions Realting to Translation and the Popularity of the Play
Kanhailal’s Dakghar: Lyrical Dramaturgy in the Manipuri Context
Dakghar at the Abbey: Cultural Sterotypes, Friendship, Faux Pas and Unequal Power Relation
Jill Parvin’s The Post Office: Re-Connecting through Re-Enactment
Conclusion
Appendix A: Notes on Major Tagore Plays Discussed
Appendix B: Biographical Notes
Bibliography
Index
