Theatre festival honouring 100-years of Ghatak, Chowdhury and Sircar's legacy

A three-day-long theatre festival by Shudrka, a prominent theatre group in Hyderabad, held in collaboration with the Department of Language and Culture, Government of Telangana, commemorated the centenary of three legendary personalities: dramatist Badal Sircar, filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak and music composer Salil Chowdhury.

- ANINDITA CHOWDHURY

Film critic Prof. Sanjay Mukherjee, who spoke at length on Ghatak's cinema, pointed out that all three maestros were born in the same year, associated with the Communist movement in India and found their own voices to lodge their protests. They preferred to be identified as the people's artists. Samik Bandhopadhyay illuminated the socio-economic and political situation in the country that not only shaped their art but also their audience.

"All the hopes and the euphoria generated by Independence were wearing thin. Joblessness, problems, touts, frustrations rearing their head, and a conscious, sensitive, educated middle-class evolved, just not in Calcutta but all over India in the big cities, in the metropolises. For them, it was time to look at the reality and their position in reality, and this turned into theatre," said Bandyopadhyay while speaking about the beginning of Badal Sircar's foray into playwriting.

A civil engineer who trained as an urban planner, Sircar wrote