Badal Sircar had already become known in India as an outstanding playwright when he formed his theatre group, Satabdi, in 1967. He had, by then, written many of his major plays which were produced in Bengal and elsewhere, in Bengali and in translations. Despite their originality in form and content they were put up in proscenium stages, as indeed they were meant to be. But Sircar himself gew increasingly dissatisfied with what he viewed as the limitations of dramatic and theatrical conventions as they had developed in Bengal. Those limitations, he felt, arose from Bengali theatre being wedded to the proscenium stage. He elaborated his ideas by writing and speaking on what he called the "Third Theatre", his prescription for rescuing Bengali theatre from a dead end and relating it, at the same time, to the vast multitude of common people in the cities and villages. More importantly, Satabdi, under his direction, decided to give practical shape to his ideas - abandoning the proscenium theatre and such aids as lighting and sets, while emphasizing nonverbal ways of communication, breaking down the city-village divide. The result was Angan Mancha (1972), their open theate which strove to tear down all kinds of barriers, evolve a form which involved everyone - actors, audience and people around - in the diffferent stages of production and thus serve, socially and creatively, theatre's purpose of effective communication. From the mid-seventies, Sircar carried on his work with a zeal that could only come from conviction and commitment. His Third Theatre productions like Michhil, Bhoma and Basi Khabar created considerable interest. Several young enthusiasts were inspired by him and his ideas and formed groups - Probir Guha's Living Theatre in Khardah, outside Calcutta, comes readily to mind - to explore areas around the path Sircar had broken.

However, Sircar's hopes and expectations of liberating Bengali theatre from the thraldom of the proscenium were not fulfilled. Other groups saw neither need nor reason to deny ther inheritance of usages or city-centric traditions, even if, initially, they had been grafts or had hapened for historical reasons. The viewing public endorsed their stand. The Third Theatre has thus been and remains a fringe phenomenon in the recent history of Bengali theatre. Nevertheless, its contribution to raising the level of consciousness of people interested in theatre has not been negligible. It may hae failed to generate a movement, but who can deny the relevance of the questions it raised and the thoughts and debates it provoked? The plays Sircar wrote for the Third Theatre have, in any case, been a welcome addition tothe corpus of Bengali dramatic literature.

This draws one's attention to another aspect of the recent history of Bengali theatre. The paucity of original plays has been a lasting complaint of producers and directors. In the nineteenth century, Girish Ghosh had to write plays - "out of necessity."

However, it would be wrong to conclude that the field of dramatic writing has been wholly arid. The large volume of written and staged plays apart, these years have witnessed the emergence of a few importance playwrights. Among them, Manoj Mitra, Mohit Chattopadhyay and Debasis Majumdar deserve mention.

By and large, however, the signs of Bengali theatre running out of steam could hardly be ignored. In fact, the excellence of the limited number of worthwhiel plays and productions made one aware of the generally uninspiring theatre prospect. In the past two decades, one had to look closely to find new directors who held out promise of trailblazing imagination and freshness. A few, like Ashok Mukhopadhyay, Ramaprasad Banik or Manoj Mitra, showed competence and originality in their productions. Butthe number has remained sadly small. Also, where were the young actors who could electrify the audience? They too have been few in number. As if to drive the point home, it is to the still active directors and actors of an earlier gneration - Utpal Dutt, Kumar Roy, Tripti Mitra, Asit Mukhopadhyay, Rudraprasad Sengupta, Bibhas Chakrabarti, to name a few - that viewers continued to turn to in the eighties for good theatre.

As for the other aspects of production, like stage lighting and scenography, it is revealing that a producer or director still has to rope in Tapas Sen to devise and handle the lighting script and persuade a reluctant Khaled Chowdhury to design the sets. Sombhu Mitra's retirement from theatre in the early seventies was a portent of the impending years when it became evident that talent was in short supply. There can, ultimately, be no complaint about the scarcity of talent: it is not something one can command into existence. But the disinclination of theatre groups to take risks and venture into untrodden ways or untried, but well-thought-out, experiments is not a congenial ambience for nurturing talent. One is reminded of the commendable efforts of Shouvanik to establish an alternative stage at the makeshift Mukta Angan in south Calcutta during the sixties and seventies, when several important experimental productions were performed there. Nobody attempts such measures any more. The lack of enterprise which is symptomatic of a stage of stagnation, if not decline, has not been removed and may even have been compounded by patronage from the government and institutional or corporate bodies. It is not only on foreign plays and ideas that Bengali theatre has been prone to rely in recent years, but also sources other than the sustaining support of ticket-buying discerning viewers.

Another aspect of recent developments may be noted. Group theatres gained a position of leadership in the late forties, but this did not mean that the commercial or mainstream Bengali theatre went out of business. Weathering periods of uncertainty, crises and temporary closures it bounced back to reclaim in the late fifties its lost ground of lack of patronage of the common viewer. Shrewdly, it introduced in its fare of sentimental mush, melodrama and dollops of sex, spurious social purposiveness and gimmicky stagecraft. As a result it chipped away further the declinign sales of group theatre productions and continues to do brisk business in its bastion, the north Calcutta theatre district. Mention should also be made of the Calcutta-based professional touring companies which go by the name of "Jatra" - althogth they have precious little in common with the traditional Bengali folk form, now fast dying out, which has authentic rights to that name.

What was perhaps needed was a professional theatre which avoided botht he blatant commercialism of mainstream theatre and the compulsions of received ideas of the new drama movement - a middle way, so to speak. Attempts have been made during the last two decades to find such a way but without much success so far. Among those whose efforts in this direction deserve mention is Soumitra Chatterjee, better known as Satyajit Ray's favourite leading man. His productions like Namjiban or Nilkantha which he puts up on the basis of four shows a week like the plays of the commercial theatre, showed promise of bridging the gap. But the promise has remained unfulfilled. No middle theatre has emerged to stem the slide of contemporary Bengali theatre.

Thus, whichever way one looks at it, it difficult not to feel uneasy, even dismayed, at the present state of health of Bengali theatre. One has only to compare it with the vigour and assurance one sees inthe productions at Hindi theatre in Calcutta. There are not many groups producing Hindi plays, but the leading among them - Usha Ganguli's Rangakarmee and Shyamanand Jalan's Padatik - have shown in their recent productions an awareness of contemporary sensibilities and control over the different components of theatre which one misses in most of the numerically-far-greater Bengali plays that are staged.

All these are chastening thoughts while viewing the progress, or its lack, in Bengali theatre inthe last twnety-five years. At the same time one should not, in fairness, shut out from reckoning some positive aspects. One is the spread of theatre in cities away from Calcutta. Some groups, like Alternative Living Theatre of Khardah, Tritirtha of Balurghat or Classic Theatre of Chandannagar, have produced such plays in the eighties and the nineties as are refreshing in their originality of approach and sincerity of purpose. Another aspect of contemporary Bengali dramatic literature is a renewed questioning mood about the natue of social problems and a searching look at springs of individual motives and behaviour. There has been a shift from excessive preoccupation with politics with, on the whole, beneficial results. Bengali theatre in its long history has shown an astounding resilience. But when there is an alarming fall in values and standards in nearly every sphere of social life in Bengal, it may be unrealistic to expect resurgence in an isolated field of creative endeavour. Nevertheless, one can reasonably take comfort from the thought that Bengali theatre has rejuvenated itself in the past from near-hopeless situations.