Badal Sircar’s ‘Evam Indrajit’: In the light of absurd drama

Abstract

In the second half of the 20th century, Badal Sircar, with the help of his play Evam Indrajit, unveiled a new horizon in the world of theatre and the Bengali drama also got its recognition to the world theatre court. In 1967, Badal Sircar, the founder of the Shatabdi theatre organization, once travelled around the country and abroad and came in contact with Martin Eslin’s ‘Absurd Drama’. In the post-modern period, ordinary people lived in a deteriorating world; Absurd Drama emerges as a way and medium to escape them from a confused, vague, endangered life without understanding the meaning of this world. From a wide experience of seeing life, Badal Sircar, in this play, made the deprivation of rural and inner-living destitute people in the socio-economic context of India. Under the guise of the mainstream of traditional drama, he created ‘Third Theatre’ as a novel theatrical project and wrote the play Evam Indrajit with the important question of modern life-asking, conflict of social stereotypes prevalent with the tingle dreams and aspirations of individuals and society, the existence of the conscience and humanity of the individual. Evam Indrajit (1965) is a representative play by playwright Badal Sircar. This much-controversial play introduced a completely new play in the era of modern Bengali drama. This new play is known as Absurd in the world of drama. The main thing about this absurd philosophy of life is to rebel against the compatibility and harmony of life. Many inconsistencies in this class of play give a glimpse of a true philosophy of life. In the current discussion, in this way Badal Sircar’s absurd play Evam Indrajit has made the Bengali literary store unprecedented. He has tried to highlight through his play how life asks, emptiness and alienation darken the light of life. This is the main theorem in the current discussion.