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Street
theatre as one of the most interactive, intimate, and impactful forms of the
performing arts. According
to Safdar Hashmi Contemporary Indian street theatre has been drawing
in equal measure from our folk and classical drama as well as from
Western drama .
It is a twentieth century phenomenon, born of the specific needs of the
working people living under capitalist and feudal exploitation.
Street theatre is basically a militant political theatre of protest. Its
function is to agitate the people and to mobilize them behind fighting
organizations.”
In
fact, it has often been used as a medium to draw attention to social and
political issues. Known as the oldest left-wing street theatre groups,
city-based theatre group Jana Natya Manch (popularly known as Janam) has
helped advance the expansion of this form of theatrical production.
The
Janam—has put together a number of successful street productions for over 40
years.
Safdar
Hashmi was a street drama artist.
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Safdar and his team were
staging the play as part of their campaign for Centre of Indian
Trade Unions (CITU)-supported candidate in the Ghaziabad municipal
elections. THEATRE activist Safdar Hashmi was brutally attacked while
performing a street play, Halla Bol, at Jhandapur village in
Sahibabad, on the outskirts of Delhi, on January 1, 1989.
When Safdar Hashmi was
killed, he was 34 and had been a member of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist) since the early 1970s.
A bunch of student
activists had revived the Delhi unit of the IPTA (Indian People’s
Theatre Association) in late 1972. partly for ideological reasons
.
During the Emergency
they had been totally destroyed. They needed our theatre in their reorganization
efforts but they had no funds.”
A new kind of theatre
was now needed, that a play that was
(a) inexpensive
(b) mobile and portable
[and]
(c) effective.”
They read dozens of
plays but none satisfied them. Janam decided to write its own plays. The first
of these was Machine, a short, 13-minute play with a cast of six,
acted in a circle with the audience on all sides, first performed on October
15, 1978.
The idea of Drama '
Machine' emerged: as
“There is a chemical
factory… called Herig-India. The workers there did not have a union. They had
two very ordinary demands… They wanted a place where they could park their bicycles and… a
canteen where they could get a cup of tea… The management was not willing even to grant these demands… The
workers went on strike and the guards opened fire, killing six workers. So this
old Communist leader told me about this incident… and he said, ‘Why don’t you
write a play about it?’”
The initial draft of Machine was written
by Safdar and another actor, and was finalized on the floor, where everyone presents
contributed. Machine is an abstract play, in a
way.
The machine, created very simply by human figures, is the
symbolic representation of capitalism. The worker, the capitalist and the security officer are all parts
of the machine; they are complementary parts of a system founded upon the
exploitation of one by the other; their co-existence, then, is unequal.
In the meanwhile, in
December 1979, Janam’s first election play, Aya Chunao, was performed extensively in Haryana. Seven
plays, then, in 14 months, totaling about 500 shows.
The street
theatre activity was an explosion. This occurred in response to the attack
on Janam on January 1, 1989, and the death of Safdar Hashmi as a result of this
attack the following day.
Janam was
performing Halla Bol(Raise Your Voice), a play on a recent seven-day industrial strike led by the Centre
of Indian Trade Unions (CITU).
After the attack and
Safdar’s murder,
Halla
Bol became a rallying cry; it was performed by
hundreds of old and new groups in several languages. Doing the play
became, by itself, a means of expressing anger, an emblem of protest, a gesture
of resistance; the fact that Halla Bol is also quite a
delightful, innovative play was nearly incidental. The attack on Janam and
Safdar’s murder provoked nationwide (and international) protest. Street
theatre, naturally, was at the very centre of these protests.
Thus,
when artists decided to observe April 12, Safdar’s birthday, as the National
Street Theatre Day.
Safdar was a
multifaceted artist and was constantly soaking up new influences and trying out
new technologies. He wrote a
1. 24-part television serial on adult literacy
and
2. women’s empowerment for the United Nations Children’s
Fund;
3. he wrote a number of songs and plays for
children,
4. he designed posters for a number of mass
organisations;
5. he took photographs;
6. and he conducted theatre workshops.
- He worked for a while at
the West Bengal Information Centre in Delhi, and was instrumental in
organising the first Ritwik Ghatak retrospective in the capital.
-
- He also organised screenings of
Cuban films, in particular those of Tomas Alea.
-
- He was a major force in
rallying artists and intellectuals around larger issues of concern: at the
time of the anti-Sikh riots in 1984 and subsequently in defence of
secularism; in reviving the legacy of Premchand; in rallying artists and
intellectuals in support of the seven-day strike in 1988.
“Safdar was an
extremely broad-minded man, in a political sense. He wanted to open a broad
cultural front. He could write poetry and plays, paint, act and sing.
His idea of a cultural
front was not confined to theatre.
He visualized
painters, musicians, singers, dancers, writers and critics – all to be drawn
into a movement out of common interest. He was a creative genius, endowed with
the zeal, energy and determination of a far-sighted organiser and theatre
visionary.” •wife about Safdar
Safdar Hashmi’s birth
anniversary—April 12—is also celebrated as National Street Theatre Day. To mark
the occasion this year, Janam has been performing their play Andher Nagri all
throughout the week in various neighbourhoods in the city. Inspired by writer
Bharatendu Harishchandra’s eponymous play (1881), Andher Nagri is about a king
who isn’t comfortable with any form of cultural expression and hence directs
his nobles to punish the locals.
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