Virtually unnoticed in the din of the election results, one of the torch-bearers of Indian theatre Badal Sircar passed away in the city at his residence at the age of 85. He was suffering from many ailments.
He had donated his body for medical research.
Marxian plays
Mr. Sircar was mostly known for his Marxian plays, which sought to establish equal rights for all, as well as for his signature-piece ‘Ebong Indrajit' (and Indrajit), which captured the angst of an urban youth and created a flutter.
He was also one of the torch-bearers of staging ‘street plays,' which brought the medium out of the proscenium into the public arena.
These plays were almost always anti-establishment, where the actors wore neither any makeup nor any dress that would mark them out from the audience. His famous plays were enacted without the trappings of a stage or a curtain — in street corners, parks and in rural settings, reaching out to a far wider audience and at far lower cost.
Trained to be a civil engineer, Mr. Sircar took up his first employment in a desolate village in central India, but left the job a few years later in desperation.
Among his many laurels was a Padmashree award.
