brecht adaptation in drama

Brecht Adaptations in Modern Bengali Theatre: A Study in ReceptionAuthor(s): Arundhati BanerjeeReviewed work(s):Source: Asian Theatre Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring, 1990), pp. 1-28Published by: University of Hawai'i PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1124034 .Accessed: 04/11/2011 08:24

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Brecht Adaptations in Modern Bengali Theatre: A Study in Reception Arundhati Banerjee

A study of the reception of a dramatic text by a theatre belonging to a different language and culture should ideally constitute research and analysis at many levels. No reception study can claim to be complete, however. It can only aspire to focus on a few chosen areas and scrutinize data and documents for some kind of an answer. Here I do not aim at any kind of totality but propose to concentrate on certain aspects of the reception of Brecht in the Bengali theatre,' especially adaptation/translation and production. I want to analyze the translated/adapted text and the performance text as well as consider the reactions of Bengali translator/ adapters and producers to Brecht as a playwright. I will also discuss the attitudes which drama and literary critics have adopted toward Brechtian plays and adaptations in the Bengali language and present a glimpse of general audience reception. Finally, I want to assess the extent to which Brecht's approach to drama and theatre has influenced Bengali playwrit- ing and production.

Adaptations play a key role in reception studies. In the case of an adaptation of a foreign-language dramatic text, the term assumes a complex significance because it not only involves adaptation at the level of the literary text but also at the level of performance. If we consider the process as a single, organic, and continuous one, then, starting from the original dramatist, the dramatic text is first received by the translator/adapter who translates or adapts it into the target language. It is then transformed by the director/producer into the performance text and is finally accrued by the team of actor/technicians who give it the shape of a stage produc-

Professor Banerjee teaches in the Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, Calcutta. Asian TheatreJournal, Vol. 7, no. 1 (Spring 1990). ? by University of Hawaii Press. All rights reserved.

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tion until it reaches the ultimate receiver-the audience. Even in this

description I have left out a few intermediate steps. The translation/adaptation of the original dramatic text is received by readers or literary critics who may not have any exposure to theatre and who consequently will read it only as text. There can also be another group of readers and critics who have an active relationship with theatre and whose reception of the translated or adapted dramatic text may be entirely different from that of the former group.

Returning to the context of Bengali theatre, let us take a brief look at the general background against which Brecht's plays were adapted and

performed and his ideas widely studied.2 The mainstream of socio-political as well as intellectual and cultural activities in post-Independence West Bengal has been largely controlled by the middle classes. Evolving from the nineteenth-century babu or "servants," of the British Raj, they had the best exposure to English education and consequently to Western culture and thought. They were also the most politically aware social class in Bengal at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was from this class that the leaders of the freedom struggle came forward; it was this class which was among the first in India to assimilate Marxist thought and

apply it to their own political situation. Out of this Marxist-leftist movement was born the great cultural movement of the 1940s which was com-

monly known as the Indian people's theatre movement.3 The avant-garde theatre activity of post-Independence Bengal which emerged as an alternative to the purely entertainment-oriented commercial theatre is com-

monly known as the "group theatre movement." It was actually an off- shoot of the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA).

As modern Bengali theatre is largely a derivation of Western theatre, adaptation of Western plays has been a characteristic trend in its his-

tory from its very inception in the late eighteenth century. Now, as a natu- ral consequence, the groups under the aegis of the group theatre movement turned to the adaptation of Western plays as there was a dearth of original plays in Bengali which could have given form to the complexities of modern life. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was a sudden upsurge in this trend as plays of major Western playwrights like Ibsen, Chekhov, Pirandello, Sartre, Camus, Albee, and Beckett began to be translated and adapted. The political situation in the 1960s became rather unstable. This decade not only saw the Chinese aggression against India but also the war with Pakistan. The Communist Party of India, formed earlier in the century and a leading political force in West Bengal, broke up into two extremist factions. Moreover, the year 1966 brought famine and an industrial crisis in the state. In 1967, Bengal had its first leftist government. The Bengali avant-garde theatre had produced left- oriented plays since the time of the IPTA, but now came exposure to

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BRECHT ADAPTATIONS IN BENGALI THEATRE

modern Western playwrights with a leftist outlook. What followed was the welcome reception of Brecht on the Bengali stage.

The first Brecht play to be adapted was The Exception and the Rule.4 This was in 1957. In 1961, the same play was adapted again by one of

Bengal's well-known stage and film personalities, Soumitra Chatto-

padhyay. It was adapted once more in 1981 by Rudraprasad Sengupta, an eminent Bengali stage director. Ritwik Ghatak, IPTA activist and later one of Bengal's leading film directors, translated Brecht's Life of Gali- leo in the mid-1960s. This play was once again translated in the early 1970s by Subroto Nandy, a group theatre director. In 1978, it was translated from the original German by Nihar Bhattacharya, a theatre scholar. In the early 1980s, there were two simultaneous translations of this play. The first was by Kumar Ray, the director of Bohurupee, the renowned theatre group which was founded by the legendary theatre producer Som- bhu Mitra back in the 1940s. The second translation was by Mohit Chat-

topadhyay, a promising Bengali playwright. Two other Brecht plays which have been very popular with Bengali translator/adapters as well as with producers are The Caucasian Chalk Circle and The Good Person of Set- zuan. The first translation of the former was done from the original Ger- man by Asoke Sen, a theatre enthusiast and scholar in the mid-1960s. Since then there have been one translation and four adaptations of the same play, most of them made in the 1970s.5 Good Person was first adapted by Nivedita Das, a renowned actress of the Bengali stage, back in the mid-1960s. Then came a translation in the late sixties by Asoke Sen, who had also translated Chalk Circle. This translation was from the original German. The other five adaptations of Good Person came one after another in the early and mid-1970s, some by directors intending to produce them, others by playwrights trying their hand at adaptations.6

Of Brecht's full-length plays, The Mother and Mother Courage and Her Children come next in the scale of popularity. The Mother was first translated, though only partially, by Utpal Datta, the leading Bengali stage personality. Close in its wake followed another translation done jointly by Chittaranjan Ghosh, a theatre scholar, and Sankho Ghose, a renowned Bengali poet. One other translation was made quite recently in the 1980s by Arun Mukhopadhyay. Mother Courage was first adapted by Utpal Datta in the late 1960s. The adaptation was set against the backdrop of the continuous Hindu-Muslim feuds during Islamic rule in India. Shortly thereafter, the play was translated once more by Bishnu Basu, a theatre scholar and critic. In 1975, it was adapted for production by Jagmohon Majumdar. In the 1980s, another translation of Mother Courage was made by Sunandan Chakraborty, a young theatre worker for his group Anarja. St. Joan of the Stockyards, though not as popular as the plays mentioned above, has also been adapted by Ajit Gangopadhyay and by Debesh

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Chakraborty. Chakraborty actually improved upon Gangopadhyay's adaptation.

Of Brecht's one-act plays, those which have been widely translated and adapted are The Measures Taken, The Informer and The Jewish Wife (from Fear and Misery in the Third Reich), In Search ofJustice, The Beggar or the Dead Dog, and Senora Carrar's Rifles. Mention must be made too of the play which was principally responsible for the popularizing and-according to some drama critics-the vulgarizing of Brecht on the Bengali stage. This was Teen Paishar Pala, an adaptation of The Threepenny Opera by the late Aji- tesh Bandyopadhyay. Besides these works, other landmarks in the history of Brecht translations and adaptations are veteran Brecht-lover Sekhar Chattopadhyay's Pontu Laha (Herr Puntila and His Man Matti), Arturo Ui (The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui), Utpal Datta's translation of The Days of the Commune, and Ashoke Mukhopadhyay's translation of Schweik Goes to War. The Trial of Lucullus has been translated several times but, as far as I can determine, never produced on the Bengali stage. Man Equals Man, Calcutta. 4th May, and In the Jungle of the Cities have been translated, but these plays have never received popular acceptance.

From translations and adaptations as literary texts, we now turn to productions of Brecht's plays on the Bengali stage. These two levels over- lap to a certain extent for most of the translations/adaptations discussed here were initiated by the need of the Bengali stage for serious and com- mitted plays. The first Brecht play to be performed in Bengali was not by a regular theatre unit, however, but by a group of university professors who staged Ritwik Ghatak's translation of The Life of Galileo at a jubilee celebration in 1966. The translation of this same play from the original German by Nihar Bhattacharya was staged in 1978 by Triteertha, a theatre group from North Bengal. In 1980, there were two more productions of Galileo-one by the Calcutta Repertory Theatre, under the direction of the Berliner Ensemble director, Fritz Benewitz, and the other by Bohuru- pee directed by Kumar Ray. Chronologically, the next important Brecht production after the 1966 Galileo was an adaptation of The Exception and the Rule by Soumitra Chattopadhyay. It was produced in 1967 by a branch of the disintegrated IPTA and directed by Mamtaz Ahmed, now a renowned theatre personality of Bangladesh. An adaptation of the same play was produced later in 1981 by the Nandikar troupe under the direction of Rudraprasad Sengupta.

In 1968, a translated version of The Good Person was presented on the Bengali stage by a group called Sandhyaneer. It was directed by the play's translator, Asoke Sen. Several adaptations of The Good Person came onto the Bengali stage during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The most remarkable of these productions was the version produced by Nandikar in 1974 and that produced by Chetana in the same year. The first was

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directed by the late Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay and the latter by Arun

Mukhopadhyay. In 1968, Asoke Sen and his unit put a translation of The Caucasian Chalk Circle on stage. The play was as much a popular choice among Bengali stage directors as with its translator/adapters. In 1978, two adaptations and one translation of this play were running simultane-

ously in different theatres in Calcutta. Of the two adaptations, one was

produced by Nandikar and directed by Rudraprasad Sengupta while the other was produced in the Arena Theatre by Badal Sircar and his group Satabdi. The translated version was directed by Subroto Nandy under the banner of his group Theater Front. In 1969 came the celebrated production of Teen Paishar Pala, adapted from The Threepenny Opera by Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay and directed by him under the aegis of Nandikar. The

year 1970 saw an adaptation of St. Joan of the Stockyards produced by a theatre group called Chaturmukh. It was once again put on stage in the early 1980s by Epic, a lesser known group.

Two landmarks in the history of Brecht plays in Bengal were produced in 1972: Pontu Laha (an adaptation of Herr Puntila and His Man

Matti) and Arturo Ui, translated from The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. Both

productions were directed by Sekhar Chattopadhyay for his group, The- ater Unit. The first performance of The Mother before the Calcutta audience was organized by the Indo-GDR Friendship Society in the 1970s. In the early eighties, separate productions of The Mother were presented by two Calcutta theatre groups, Chetana and Ritwik. In spite of several

adaptations and translations, Mother Courage and Her Children has been produced only twice, each time by a minor theatre group: Nabanatyam was the first group to stage it (in 1975); in the eighties it was put on stage by

FIGURE 1. A scene from Theater Unit's production of Arturo Ui (The Resistable Rise ofArturo Ui). (Photo: Debasish Roychowdhury.)

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FIGURE 2. Chetna's production of Ma (The Mother). (Photo: Chetna.)

Anarja. Utpal Datta's translation of The Days of the Commune was performed by a Jatra troupe who adapted the play according to their own needs in 1977.7 Under the sponsorship of the Max Mueller Bhavan

(MMB), Calcutta, a few other Brecht productions such as Man Equals Man have been seen, though only before a limited and knowledgeable audience. A translation of Schweik Goes to War was staged in the early 1980s by Theater Workshop, one of the foremost theatre groups in Bengal and directed by Bibhas Chakraborty. Brecht's one-act plays have been enacted quite often on the Bengali stage; the most frequently produced ones are Senora Carrar's Rifles, The Measures Taken, The Beggar or The Dead

Dog, In Search ofJustice, The Jewish Wife, and The Informer. From this information on literary translations and adaptations of

Brecht's plays and their productions on stage, one can arrive at a few con- clusions. Clearly the majority of the Bengali translators and adapters have been the producers themselves. The translations initiated by literary needs rather than those of the theatre have usually been undertaken by scholars of the German language from the original texts. On the other hand, those adaptations which have fulfilled the requirements of the stage have been done from English translations. This is to be expected since the former approach is necessarily academic whereas the aim of the latter is to

produce a workable performance text which can be presented before the

Bengali audience. It was a constant demand from the stage that prompted these translations and adaptations, especially after the 1960s.

Another conclusion is that Bengali stage directors have shown a

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marked preference for some of Brecht's later and more complex plays- The Life of Galileo, The Good Person of Setzuan, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle -rather than for most of the earlier didactic plays with direct political messages-plays such as Man Equals Man, The Bread Shop, St. Joan of the Stockyards, and The Mother. Among the later plays, however, Mother Courage and Her Children has been somewhat neglected, possibly because of its antiwar content, which may not have seemed relevant to a contemporary Bengali audience having few direct experiences of war. Among the Lehrstiick plays it is The Mother which has gained popularity among the Bengali producers. Another early play which has been produced several times by different groups is The Exception and the Rule. While the later plays have gained immense popularity with audiences, productions of The Mother and The Exception and the Rule have never received appreciation to the same extent. Pontu Laha, the adapted version of Herr Puntila, never achieved the popularity of Teen Paishar Pala, the Nandikar adaptation of The Threepenny Opera. Nevertheless, it gained great critical acclaim from Brecht scholars and theatre critics. Brecht's expressionist plays, with one or two exceptions, have mostly been neglected by translator/adapters and

producers alike. As far as performance of Brecht's one-act plays is concerned, one discerns two distinctive trends. Episodes from Fear and Misery in the Third Reich, a play written in the realistic mode rather than the epic (Benjamin 1977, 39), have been enacted by several groups at different periods during the twenty years of Brecht productions in Bengali. Two particular episodes, The Informer and The Jewish Wife, have been chosen by various translator/adapters and directors time and again. Plays with direct and didactic political content- The Measures Taken, for example- have also witnessed quite a few performances by several groups.

Two integral features of Brecht theatre seem to have motivated producers in Bengal in two distinct ways. To some, the relevance of Brecht's plays to the country's sociopolitical situation has been para- mount. That these producers have not paid much attention to Brecht's method and form becomes clear from an analysis of their adaptations as literary texts as well as performance texts. Good examples of such productions are Bhalomanusher Pala (Chetana), Pontu Laha (Theater Unit), Bhalo- manush (Nandikar), and Ma (Chetana). To other producers, Brecht's innovative form and novel idea of theatre have come foremost. Instances of such adaptations are Teen Paishar Pala (Nandikar), Khorir Gondi (Nandi- kar), Gondi (Satabdi), and Galileo (Bohurupee). They have placed entertainment before instruction in their understanding of Brechtian theatre. But despite their interest in Brecht's form, they have not been true to the instructions he gave for the production of his plays or to the method he propounded in his theoretical writings. Instead they have molded Brecht according to the taste and appreciation of the Bengali audience.

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To substantiate what I have been saying, let me quote the reactions of certain Bengali producers to Brecht as a playwright and exponent of theatre. Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay (who had given the Bengali stage two of the most popular Brecht productions, Teen Paishar Pala and Bhalo-

manush) was asked why he had chosen to present Brecht. He replied: "What kind of plays can Communists produce, plays where Communist

propaganga would not be too loud and which would also have some aesthetic value? I found Brecht satisfying both these conditions at once"

(Gangopadhyay 1982, 105). In another interview he added: "The chal-

lenge of taking up Brecht, who was considered a difficult playwright by the Bengali intelligentsia, had also appealed to me" (A. Bandyopadhyay 1975, 35-36). He felt that so long as one was doing an adaptation, one had the freedom to mold Brecht to one's own needs. Thus a producer need not be too concerned with Brecht's methods and techniques (A. Bandyopadhyay 1980, 17; 1983, 69-71). The productions of Sekhar

Chattopadhyay, another veteran producer of Brecht, have gained the critical distinction of being judged closest to Brecht's concept of theatre

(Drama Critic 1975b). He traces his choice of Brecht to the political situation of Bengal in the 1960s: the crisis within the Communist Party of India was reflected on the cultural front. In the confusion that ensued, Brecht's plays appeared to him as capable of analyzing the complexities of the leftist position within a capitalist system (Gangopadhyay 1982, 105-

106). To Chattopadhyay, Brecht appeared to be "a man who gave theatre a new outlook, a new dimension, who looked at the theatre from a com-

pletely new angle" (Banerjee 1974-1975, 8). Besides, Brecht's formal

concepts of theatre did not seem entirely unfamiliar to the Indian percep- tion; Chattopadhyay felt that the essentials of epic theatre-the distancing or alienation, the narrative elements-had already been present in various folk forms of Bengal such as thejatra (Gangopadhyay 1982, 105-106; Banerjee 1974-1975, 7-15).8

Arun Mukhopadhyay, director of Bhalomanusher Pala and Ma

(adaptations of Good Person and The Mother, respectively) said in an interview: "Many elements of the form of theatre expounded by Brecht have been taken from the East. Hence, there should be no difficulty in the acceptance of Brecht's theatre in this country. . . . We are doing Brecht mainly because the content of many Brechtian plays coincides with the present political situation and contemporary reality" (Gangopadhyay 1982, 107). For him Brecht's plays could be used as cultural weapons to fight the battle for the exploited in changing capitalist society to a classless world. He does not believe that there is any unique method for the production of Brecht's plays such as a "Brechtian method" (Mukhopadhyay 1980, 12-16). Rudraprasad Sengupta, an eminent director who has produced Khorir Gondi and Byatikram (stage adaptations of The Caucasian Chalk

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Circle and The Exception and the Rule, respectively), simply thinks that since Brecht is one of the greatest playwrights of the twentieth century, he should be produced on the Bengali stage (Gangopadhyay 1982, 107). Utpal Datta, who has adapted and translated quite a few of Brecht's plays and is also the founder of the Brecht Society in Calcutta, has clear opinions on productions of Brecht even if he himself has never produced one. He believes that without a lucid knowledge of Marxism and a conviction in Marxism-Leninist political theory, it is futile even to attempt Brecht. Since the content dictates the form, anyone who is interested only in the innovativeness of Brecht's form without understanding his political ideol-

ogy is bound to misinterpret Brecht's theatre totally (S. Bandopadhyay 1977, 7-18). Sombhu Mitra, the doyen of Bengali theatre who played the lead role in Fritz Benewitz's production of The Life of Galileo, has never tried his hand at presenting Brecht on stage. Nevertheless, according to him, Brecht should be no stranger to the Bengali theatre worker steeped in the jatra tradition and Tagore's plays. All controversies over Brecht's

concepts-such oft-discussed terms as "alienation," "epic theatre," "theatre of dialectics," "gestural theatre"-are useless for they merely con- fuse a theatre worker's direct approach to Brecht's theatre. This confusion, he believes, has largely been created by the mediation of Western critics and theorists. Taking the concept of alienation as an example, he shows how it is inherently present in the jatra form or even Tagore's idea of theatre (Mitra 1965, 130-133).

From the beginning of Bengal's exposure to Brecht at different lev-

els-literary, dramatic, theatrical-there has been a constant debate, sometimes verging on direct confrontation, between producer/directors and theatre critics or theorists. A project report on Indian productions of Brecht by the Max Mueller Bhavan, Calcutta, states: "Indian productions of Brecht's plays have sometimes exposed merely the limitations or idiosyncracies of the producers themselves. But in most cases producers have tried to remove the barriers of language and setting and make Brecht more accessible and relevant to the Indian audience. Their attempts have provoked questions as to whether changes were unavoid- able" (Project Coordinator 1980). The producers of Brecht in Bengal have more or less agreed that the relevance of the sociopolitical view reflected in Brecht's plays is much more important in the Indian context than the novelty of form. On the subject of formal and production aspects of Brecht's plays, their argument has been that since Brecht himself was on the side of innovation there is no harm in making a few improvisations to assimilate Brecht into the Bengali tradition of theatre.

The critics and theorists, on the other hand, have laid great importance on the methodology of theatre which Brecht propounded. Theatre critics have in most cases brought the adapter/producers to task for their

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deviations from "authentic Brecht." The immensely popular version of The Threepenny Opera was accused by theatre critics of romanticizing the figure of Mack the Knife and of so crowding the play with incidentals that its Brechtian message never reached the audience (S. Bandyopadhyay 1970, 40-44). The adaptations of The Good Person of Setzuan by Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay and The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Rudraprasad Sengupta have been criticized for their excessive use of song and dance in a wholly un-Brechtian manner. It has been said that in these productions song and dance were used purely for entertainment, setting aside the object of instruction. The music for these songs, it has been alleged, merely enter- tains the audience without going against the grain of words and provoking them to think (Drama Critic 1974; Adhikari 1975; Dasgupta 1979a). The sets of a certain stage version of Galileo have been regarded as being too heavy and ornamental for a Brechtian production and the lighting has been accused of creating illusion and consequently ignoring Brecht's instructions for full, flat stage illumination. The costumes, moreover, were too bright and colorful and did not have the "worn" look which Brecht prescribed for costumes in his productions (Roy 1980, 77-82).

The acting style for most Brecht productions on the Bengali stage has also been brought to task. Since there is general confusion among Brechtian producers and theorists alike as to the proper form of acting suited to Brecht's "epic theatre," the objective and conscious showing of characters or the street-scene reportage (Willett 1979, 26-28, 58, 71, 133, 138, 193-200) has always been a subject of great controversy. The critics have blamed the actors for being too emotional or too involved in the characters they portray instead of being objective and analytical. A stage production of The Mother was decried for putting excessive importance on characterization whereas, being a Lehrstiick, it should have placed minimal emphasis on character. The mother, the critic alleged, was presented as an individual character rather than the representative of a class (H. Bandyopadhyay 1983, 55-60). While some critics argue that the suc- cess of Brechtian theatre on the Bengali stage is due to the song-and- dance spectacle (the tradition on which the Bengali audience has been nourished), others contend that it is the novelty of the epic form of theatre that has broken through the Bengali audience's "horizon of expectations" (Jauss 1982, 22, 44, 79).

To understand how translator/adapters and stage producers of Brecht have been approaching the plays, it is instructive to analyze two stage productions based on two different adaptations of The Caucasian Chalk Circle which ran almost simultaneously in Calcutta in 1978 and compare them with the original.9 In the process we can note a few production details of these versions. Both adaptations were done from English translations of the play. The prologue in the first adaptation is set in con-

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temporary rural Bengal. Instead of amiable discussions between repre- sentatives of the two Caucasian Kolkhosh villages for the ownership of a valley, the adapter introduces a rather melodramatic and hackneyed dis-

pute over a piece of land (a common theme of many progressive Bengali plays) between small peasants and a powerful, community head. The locale of the parable, on the other hand, is set in Muslim-ruled Bengal. The time and space, therefore, are part of familiar history. The Georgian setting in the original, which would have created the distance of parable and the objectivity of an alien milieu for the German audience, is lost in the adaptation. The episodes in this version have been robbed of their titles. The narrative quality and the estrangement effect have been somewhat marred by this kind of editing. The play has been divided into scenes according to the change of locale; if titles do come they, unlike the titles in the original, denote the locale and not the inherent message of the

forthcoming episode. The first three episodes-that is, "Grusha's Tale" -have been made to comprise the first act and the last two episodes- "Azdak's Adventures"-have been brought together to form the second act. Songs sung by many of the individual characters have been omitted. But the worst harm to the text is caused by the omission of four vital songs which are essential to the central theme and poetic quality. These are the songs sung by the chorus to bring objectivity and estrangement into the emotional turbulence which overcomes Grusha at different points in the play. If these choral songs are edited and the actress playing Grusha is made to act the emotional scenes, then the whole point of epic objectivity is lost. Besides, various narrative pieces sung by the chorus have been edited. The songs sung by the chorus before each of Azdak's judgments have been omitted and titles have been attached to these three sequences. That Azdak sits in judgment wherever he pleases, in the street or in the marketplace, has been completely overlooked.

In the stage production based on this particular adaptation, which was directed by Rudraprasad Sengupta, the adapter himself, there were set changes for each locale. For this the help of two different curtains was employed. Though the sets were fundamentally suggestive, they were rather colorful and elaborate in design. The costumes reminded one of a gaudy pageant. After seeing this production, a critic observed: "One gets the impression that Brecht's productions are very expensive" (Dasgupta 1979b, 61). Lights were used to create atmosphere. In the sequence where Grusha crosses the broken bridge with the child, the audience was held in breathtaking suspense of which Brecht might not have approved. The music was light and entertaining but lacked that quality of provoking the audience to sit up and think (Willett 1979, 86, 87, 90). The singers of the chorus were never present on stage and made continous entries and exits. The acting in the first half of the play, going against all Brechtian pre-

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FIGURE 3. Grusha and other servants of the palace in Nandikar's Khorir Gondi, an

adaptation of The Caucasian Chalk Circle. (Photo: Nandikar.)

cepts, was emotional and melodramatic (Willett 1979, 26-28, 58, 71, 133, 138, 193-200). Though the adventures of Azdak (the second half) were better represented, Azdak's song hailing Granny Grusinia was transformed into an emotional encomium dedicated to Mother Bengal. One hundred and eleven actors and actresses created a spectacle on the

stage. It seemed that throughout the performance the director could not decide whether to create an emotional impact on the audience, to enthrall them with color and spectacle, or to arouse their intellectual objectivity.

The second adaptation under discussion is unique in many ways. In the first place, Badal Sircar, the adapter and director, reduced the almost-three-hour play to roughly one and a half hours. Moreover, unlike the other version, his adaptation is meant not for the proscenium but for the arena stage. Further, he adapted only the central parable and

deprived it of the context of the prologue-an omission that obviously detracts from the play's central message. Instead of the chorus of singers he introduced two narrators. By leaving the time and place unspecified, this adaptation preserved the parable-like quality of the original play. The titles of the different episodes were omitted, but there were no divisions into acts and scenes. The whole action of the play was fluid and continuous. Here, too, many of the songs sung by the individual characters were edited. Since the sequence where Michael plays with the other children while Grusha watches is omitted, the grotesque irony of children playing the political game of adults was lost. Azdak's speech revealing the farcical

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nature of justice-which is very relevant in the original play-was also edited. As in the first adaptation, the significant fact that Azdak holds his court anywhere he pleases was overlooked. Moreover, the second case which Azdak judges, that of the innkeeper and the daughter-in-law versus the stable hand, was eliminated.

Though this adaptation does little justice to the original play, the production is in essence more Brechtian in its presentation than the other version. The play, as noted earlier, was produced in a kind of arena theatre (a lecture hall to be precise) with the audience sitting all around at the same level as the acting space. The director used no sets or musicians. The sources of light were visible to the audience, and the performance was more or less in full light. It was the actors and actresses who built up any necessary stage properties with their bodies. The production suffered an important loss, however, as all the songs were turned into mere narrative verses recited by two narrators. The costumes were suggestive and minimal. Often the same actor or actress played more than one role and also joined in the chorus. The manner of acting was totally uninvolved when compared with other Brecht productions in Bengali. The director's achievement lay in making the production completely fluid. The simplicity of his production brought it close to the Brechtian ideal of theatre and yet at the same time the play possessed the elements of a Bengali fairy tale close to the audience's consciousness. Rustom Bharucha, who has done extensive work on Bengal's political theatre, writes about this production: "I found myself missing the subtle dialectics and interplay of contradic-

FIGURE 4. Gondi, an adaptation of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, which was produced by Badal Sircar's theatre group Satabdi. (Photo: Debasish Roychowdhury.)

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tions that pervade the extraordinary play in the original text" (1983, 186). Bharucha is right so far as the adaptation of the dramatic text (but not necessarily the performance text) is concerned, for the former is undoubtedly an outright simplification of the original play.

Four other Brecht plays adapted and translated for the Bengali stage are considered landmarks in the history of Brecht productions in Bengal. Among these, two plays have seen different adaptation/translations and stage productions: The Good Person of Setzuan and The Life of Gali- leo. Though The Good Person has been adapted at least five times by different playwrights and has been produced as many times,10 we shall discuss here those that have received the most acclaim. These are the adaptation/ productions which were staged in 1974-Bhalomanusher Pala (PLATE 6) and Bhalomanush. The first was adapted by Arun Mukhopadhyay in 1965 from an English translation and directed by him under the banner of Chetana. The second was adapted and directed by the late Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay and produced by Nandikar. The familiarization of the locale in both

adaptations robbed the play of its parable-like quality. Bhalomanush, the more popular of the two, exploited gross humor and slapstick in the name of entertainment. Too much color and spectacle in production obscured the central message. The urge for an alternative social system where a good person could survive with integrity loses poignancy in both adaptations. In Bhalomanusher Pala, Shen-Te and Shui-Ta are literally given separate personalities by introducing dialogue between the two in sequences inserted between the original episodes. In Bhalomanush, the transforma- tion in personality is made so sensational that it detracts from the fact that Shen-Te's change is necessarily one of class attitude and social behavior. Both adaptations tended to sentimentalize Shen-Te's dilemma. Though the production of Bhalomanusher Pala was nearer to the spirit of the original, having an actor and actress playing Shen-Te and Shui-Ta separately defeated the central intention of the original play.

The Life of Galileo has been translated at least four times and adapted once."1 Here again we shall consider only two translation/productions. These productions-Galileo, translated and directed by Kumar Ray for his group Bohurupee, and Galileor Jeeban, translated by Mohit Chattopadhyay and directed by Fritz Benewitz on behalf of the Calcutta Repertory Theater-were brought to the stage almost simultaneously in 1980. Both are retranslations from English. In Galileo, the editing was rather clumsy and displayed a lack of true understanding of the play-for example, the scene with the little monk, the character of Vanni, and the Plague and the Carnival scenes were either omitted or edited drastically. The production was preceded by an extract from one of Tagore's plays, Achalayatan, to underline its relevance for the Bengali audience. Without going into detailed explanation, it can be said that there is as little in com-

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FIGURE 5. Shui Ta observes his sleeping dependents in Chetna's Bhalomanusher Pala. (Photo: Nandikar.)

mon between the two plays as between the two playwrights. The editing and performance scheme was done with the object of projecting Galileo as a hero and arousing empathy for his character among the audience. At the end of the play, Galileo is made to disappear gradually into a starry cyclorama with the help of a mechanical contraption. The acting verged on the melodramatic, the sets were elaborate, the lights atmospheric, the costumes rich and colorful. Yet, at the same time, the production adopted so-called Brechtian gimmicks, such as slide projections and the recitation of verses at the beginning of certain scenes by narrators.

In Chattopadhyay's translation, three scenes were cut-the Plague scene, the Carnival scene, and the final scene where the Discorsi crosses the border. This last was replaced by two young boys singing the verse at the beginning of the same scene in the original. The Plague scene is necessary to expose the contradictions in Galileo's character; the Carni- val scene is even more crucial in explicating the central message of the play. Thus the omission of these scenes has harmed the play to a certain extent. The sets in this performance were simple; the lighting was more or less flat and full apart from some zonal usage; the costumes had a worn look while the compositions were reminiscent of historical paintings. The acting was low key and critical-quite different from the usual trend on the Bengali stage. Apart from the composition of the songs, music was minimal. Slide projections were used, and the titles at the beginning of the scenes were read out by the boy playing Andrea from a copy of the

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FIGURE 6. The late Keya Chakraborty as Shen Te in Nandikar's Bhalomanush, an

adaptation of The Good Person of Setzuan. (Photo: Nandikar.)

stage script. (He also sang the verses at the beginning of each scene.) No

explicit attempt at alienation or other Brechtian techniques was made. The production was successful in establishing that this is a play in which main actions are analytically "shown" against the backdrop of history. Yet many critics considered both productions in the light of the portrayal of the central characters.

The Threepenny Opera and Herr Puntila and His Man Matti have been

adapted and produced as Teen Paishar Pala and Pontu Laha, respectively, in

Bengali.'2 The former was adapted and directed by Ajitesh Bandyopa- dhyay for his group Nandikar, while the latter was adapted by the Ger- man scholar Nihar Bhattacharya from the original and directed by Sekhar

Chattopadhyay under the aegis of Theater Unit.'3 The adaptation of The

Threepenny Opera was praised for its innovative quality, but at the cost of the "real Brecht" (S. Bandyopadhyay 1971). The locale was late-nine-

teenth-century Calcutta, for example, and undue attention was paid to

producing a colorful representation of this milieu, which in itself became an object of interest for the Bengali audience. Mack the Knife was

portrayed as a romantic rebel against the greater criminals of the social

system with his colorful costume, swaggering attitudes, and sideburns. The songs were set to vibrant and entertaining music which often drowned the underlying message. Slide projections were used unevenly, while posters and signs denoted locale or sometimes highlighted major

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FIGURE 7. Bibhas Chakraborty and Sombhu Mitra as Sagredo and Galileo in Calcutta Repertory Theatre's GalileorJeeban (The Life of Galileo). (Photo: Nemai

Ghosh.)

incidents. Set changing by the singing chorus in full view of the audience added a Brechtian touch to the production, but the Mounted Messenger being transformed into half-Siva and half-Tiger Brown was too bold an innovation. Incidental laughter and coarse fun diverted attention from the original play's central critique of society.

The adaptation of Herr Puntila was done from the original. Set in a Bengal village, it managed to preserve the spirit of Brecht's plays. Though the production was hailed as "real Brecht at last" (Drama Critic 1975b), it failed to preserve the playwright's poetry from the vulgar. Indeed, at some points the play verged on crudity and coarseness. One critic raised an interesting issue: "If tears could stop men from thinking so could laughter and especially laughter which was caused by gross fun" (Drama Critic 1975a). But the production could boast of its simplicity of stage design with paper sculptures of trees and lampposts which moved as an actor walked. The musical score used the tradition of Bengal's keertan.14 The lights provided full illumination, and there were special light arrangements for song sequences as prescribed by Brecht (Willett 1978, 203). The portrayal of the two major characters, Puntila and Matti, was controlled and critical. The director had reportedly consulted the Theater- arbeit record of the 1949 Berliner Ensemble production (Drama Critic

1975b), but even then he generally failed to combine laughter and serious social criticism in his production except at certain rare moments.

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FIGURE 8. Macheath among the prostitutes in Nandikar's Teen Paishar Pala, an adaptation of The Threepenny Opera. (Photo: Nemai Ghosh.)

In the last two decades, Brecht study has spread widely among theoreticians of drama, theatre critics, and the middle-class intelligentsia. The number of articles, discussions, and seminars on Brecht and his theatre have competed with the number of productions of his plays on the

Bengali stage. The Brecht Society of India, formed in Calcutta back in the 1960s, still publishes a regular journal in Bengali called Epic Theatre. 15

In 1978, the eightieth anniversary of Brecht's birth was celebrated not only by the Max Mueller Bhavan, Calcutta, but also by different inde- pendent organizations and theatre groups.

The Brecht theoreticians of Bengal can be broadly divided into two major classes. The first groups considers the social message and content of Brecht's plays to be primary and his form secondary. The second group is more concerned with the formal aspects of Brecht's plays than their content. Whereas the first group has a generally Marxist outlook, the second group displays rightist tendencies. To illustrate, let us examine the opinions of certain major Brecht scholars.

The only full-fledged book in Bengali devoted solely to the discussion of Brecht and his theatre was written by an active theatre worker, Satya Bandyopadhyay, of the People's Little Theater group. His access to the German language has led him to study Brecht and his writings in the

original. His book entitled Brecht 0 Tanr Theater (Brecht and His Theatre) places the German playwright against the backdrop of his historical milieu. Quite a few chapters of this book deal with Brecht's activities

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FIGURE 9. A scene from Theater Unit's Pontu Laha, an adaptation of Herr Puntila and his Man Matti. (Photo: Debasish Roychowdhury.)

against fascism, his association with the communists, and his exile abroad. The author follows Brecht's dramatic career from the era of his association with Piscator, through the Lehrstiick period and the evolution of the idea of epic theatre, down to the theatre of dialectics. Ban-

dyopadhyay never discusses Brecht's method or his idea of theatre without reference to his political beliefs. He makes it clear that Brechtian theatre would be meaningless without the social and political vision which

generated it. While Bandyopadhyay does not dwell on Brecht's expressionist

phase, Nihar Bhattacharya, a critic and theoretician who has translated quite a few of Brecht's plays from the original German, discusses in detail the early plays of Brecht's dramatic career in his article "Brechter Natyabhabana" (1985, 41-56). There is no attempt in his article to

explain the significance of the concepts of epic theatre or alienation or the theatre of dialectics. He places The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny above The Threepenny Opera as a play, and his discussion of Mother Courage and Her Children does not mention the antiwar theme at all. In fact, he avoids any reference to Brecht's political ideology or its effect on his crea- tion. Yet he does bring up the controversy which arose within the Com- munist Politburo around The Mother. Toward the end of his article, Bhat-

tacharya tries to view The Life of Galileo in light of the life of its author: "It is noteworthy to mark the similarity of Brecht's life with the life of this sci- entist. After ten years Brecht left West Europe for East Europe. In the

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West he had created with all freedom but there was one thing lacking and this was fulfilled by East Berlin. There he got attractive opportunities, honour and reward, but with that also the Inquisition" (1985, 55). The critic conveniently forgets that Brecht had to face another kind of Inquisi- tion during his stay in the United States for his alleged un-American activities.

Bishnu Ghosh, another theatre scholar, attacks rightist critics for neglecting Brecht's identity as a communist in the face of his identity as a humanist. He claims that since there can be no conflict between these two identities, one should not try to deny that Brecht's basic convictions were based on the Marxist creed (1973, 101-112). Dhruba Gupta, a literary critic and academic who has an interest in Brechtian theatre, says that the playwright's relationship with the socialist countries or indeed with social- ism itself was never a simple one, though he was certainly a believer in Marxist ideology. In his "Ekti Chithi" he chooses to call Brecht "a private Marxist" (1982, 17). Utpal Datta, a theatre scholar in his own right who once claimed that Brecht was "out of use" in Bengal (Guha 1979) because he was "too intellectual, too cerebral" (Datta 1982b) for the Indian audience, has written a book entitled Stanislavsky Theke Brecht (Datta 1982a, 68-136). While relating Brecht's multilevel and complex connections with Marxism and the Marxists, he also offers enlightening comments on Brecht's method and ideas. He argues, unlike other Brecht theorists in Bengal, that empathy does have a place in Brechtian theatre. He discusses the concept of alienation, epic theatre, and the antihero and gives quite original interpretations of these theories. According to him, "alienation" or "estrangement" can be explained by the theory of Marx- ist dialectics (p. 92).16 He reacts sharply against certain Bengali critics who, following the criticism of Willett, have related Brecht's concept of alienation to Russian formalism and to Shklovsky, saying that "Verfrem- dung" is only a German translation of the Russian "ostranenie" (Biswas 1975). According to Datta's point of view, Brecht's idea is closer to the Marxist concept. In contrast there is the opinion of Dharani Ghosh, a rightist critic, who believes that Brecht had no fixed political opinions (S. Bandyopadhyay 1980). Samik Bandyopadhyay, a self-professed leftist theatre critic, finds Brecht's "basic economic understanding of reality" to have been constant (S. Bandyopadhyay 1980). Most other Brechtian theorists quote from his writings to explain his terminology. They rarely come forward with original interpretations or show true understanding of Brechtian theory.

Let us now turn from Brechtian theorists to the general audience. Our discussion will not be based on empirical study of the actual reception of Brecht's plays by the Bengali audience; rather, it involves some conjectures on the subject. Certainly most of this audience is composed of

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the urban middle class. Even if some of Brecht's one-act plays such as Samadhan (The Measures Taken), Ulki (The Chalk Circle), and an adaptation of The Caucasian Chalk Circle (Gondi) have been performed in industrial belts and rural areas, such audiences form a very small percentage of the actual audience of Brecht in Bengali. Though Brecht himself was quite conscious of audience reception-indeed, he allowed them to witness his rehearsals and comment on them (Strittnatter 1967)-the producers of Brecht in Bengal do not seem to be concerned about audience reception. The critic Deependu Chakraborty, who did make a cursory survey of audience reaction to Brechtian productions, says that it is usually the act-

ing or the technical innovations which attract the audience. They also

appreciate performances because of their song-and-dance spectacle, while at the same time they are confused by certain plays which follow Brech- tian methods of production too closely. In other plays, the audience has been eager to discover the story line but Brecht's social message has rarely reached them. Neither have they been made to sit up and think or to turn an analyzing gaze on familiar surroundings (Chakraborty 1976). In the case of productions which have not succeeded in gaining the audience's attention, producers allege that it was difficult for the Bengali audience- nurtured in the tradition of the melodramatic jatra on the one hand and the Westernized naturalistic theatre on the other-to understand and

accept the Brechtian mode of theatre. Arun Mukhopadhyay believes that the lack of dramatic elements, emotional excitement, suspense, and psy- chological exploration and the emphasis on rationality rather than emotion in Brecht's plays have gone against the appreciation of Brecht by the Bengali audience (1983, 73-75). One notes that the productions which have enjoyed popularity such as Teen Paishar Pala and Bhalomanush have been accused of deviating from the Brechtian method of theatre, while those which have had poor audience reception, such as Arturo Ui and Pontu Laha, have been acclaimed by critics for their fidelity to Brecht's idea of theatre.

But if Brecht has not been rightly received by the Bengali audience, the responsibility cannot lie entirely with them. Ever since the introduction of Brecht to Bengal-on the stage, in literary journals, and in drama seminars-there has been an essential flaw in the approach of Bengali critics and producers. Allowing for a few exceptions, the critics, scholars, and producers have compartmentalized certain ideas in Brecht's creations which the playwright/producer himself had skillfully integrated into an organic whole. In the Brechtian play-indeed, in any work of art -it is naive to separate form and content. But that is one of the major issues which has ignited controversy among these critics and producers. A parallel tendency is to separate the audience's intellectual sensibility from its emotional counterpart. In demanding cerebration from his audience

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rather than emotional involvement, Brecht was not in fact negating emotion as a whole from the theatrical experience (Willett 1979, 93, 101, 140, 225, 227); he was reacting against an excess of blinding emotion and the wrong use to which it is put. When one considers the rapid growth of Nazism against which Brecht had declared war, one can understand his reaction against excessive emotional involvement that made the common man lose his judgment of right and wrong. Moreover, in a bourgeois soci-

ety, instruction is seldom related to entertainment. Learning is, in most cases, tiresome. But for Galileo, as much as for Brecht, learning could be the best form of entertainment (Willett 1979, 69-77, 133, and 179-181). And that is what he sought and succeeded to do in his plays. The producers and critics in Bengal have simply overlooked this primary truth about Brechtian theatre. Either they have leaned too heavily on entertainment or have depended too much on dry didacticism-the conveyance of the central message without the elements of entertainment ingrained in every Brechtian play. As a result, their attitudes toward the audience have been lopsided.

But Brecht's plays and the study of his theatre still reign power- fully in West Bengal, where traditions of theatre are among the richest in India. Note how the Brechtian mode has exerted its influence on playwrit- ing and production in the Bengali theatre. Take, for example, the play called Marich Sambad (The Tale of Marich), written and directed by Arun Mukhopadhyay. Mukhopadhyay had a fair exposure to Brecht before he wrote the play; he adapted The Good Person of Setzuan in 1965 and must have been exposed to Brecht productions during the 1960s. The central theme of Marich Sambad is the way individuals are used against their own class by those in power. To illustrate this theme, the playwright uses three parallel situations set in three totally different points in time and space. The first is derived from the Indian epic Rdmdyana, the second from the contemporary United States, and the third from an Indian rural situation. As far as the form is concerned, the play has been influenced by the Brechtian method of theatre to a great extent. There is a street performer who is actually narrator and stage manager at once. Present throughout the play is a chorus of singers accompanied by musicians; their songs interrupt the action to underline a specific point of view. Some of these songs have titles which are displayed through posters. The play does not have a continuous story line or a beginning-middle-end structure. The narration is usually maintained through choric songs, festoons, and posters; the posters are also used to communicate place names and sequence titles. The characters address the audience time and again, breaking the illusion of a four-wall theatre. The sets are simple and minimal. Putting on costume accessories or arranging stage properties in full view of the audience are techniques which have been easily integrated into the pro-

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FIGURE 10. Chetna's Marich Sambad (The Tale of Marich), a play modelled on Brechtian precepts. (Photo: Nemai Ghosh.)

duction. The most remarkable aspect of this play is the ease with which the playwright/producer blends Brechtian techniques with folk elements derived from the traditional theatre forms of Bengal. This is one of the reasons why Marich Sambad gained immense popularity among the

Bengali audience. It has been more than twenty years since Bengali intelligentsia and

theatre workers began the study of Brecht at the academic level and on the

stage. By now, Brecht has become a household name for all theatre-lov- ers. In the 1980s, however, enthusiasm for Brecht can be said to be on the wane. Yet in these two decades Brecht has left an indelible impression on the history of Bengali drama. And one need not be a seer to predict that the German playwright will have a definite, if indirect, role to play in

carving out the future of Bengali theatre.

NOTES

1. All references to "Bengal" or "Bengali" in this study are in relation to the Indian state of West Bengal or its official language.

2. For this analysis of the general background I have consulted the following works: R. C. Majumdar, History of Modern Bengal, vol. 3 (Calcutta: G. Bharadwaj and Company, 1978); B. B. Misra, The Indian Middle Classes: Their Growth in Modern Times (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983); Sushil Kumar

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Mukherjee, The Story of the Calcutta Theatres. 1753-1980 (Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi and Company, 1982); Sudhi Pradhan, ed., Marxist Cultural Movement in India, 3 vols. (Calcutta: Navana, 1979-1985); Sumit Sarkar, Modern India: 1885-1947

(Delhi: Macmillan India Limited, 1984). 3. The Indian People's Theatre Association (or IPTA, as it is more popu-

larly known) generated a nationwide cultural movement closely related to the

sociopolitical activities of the Communist Party of India. The IPTA was also associated directly with the Progressive Writers' Association formed in 1936. In

1942, the Anti-Fascist Writers' and Artists' Association came into being in

Bengal. The first unit of the IPTA was formed in Bangalore in 1941. The pan- Indian organization was constituted two years later in May 1943. The name must have been suggested by the title of Romain Rolland's book People's Theater. The central object of the IPTA's activities was directed toward extending the arts to the masses and bringing rural folk culture to the forefront. Despite a promising beginning, however, the organization was short-lived. In 1946, signs of internal dissent became apparent and soon precipitated a complete split. Factions of the IPTA still exist but are virtually inactive.

4. The data presented here are by no means complete or comprehensive. I have drawn mainly from three sources in compiling the information collected here: a list of Brecht adaptations/translations and their production dates com-

piled by Somen Guha and published in a little magazine called Anustup (vol. 2, no. 2, 1977-1978); a list of Brecht productions with data published in a theatre

journal called Theatre Bulletin (Bertolt Brecht issue, January-February 1980); and a list of Brecht productions sponsored by the Max Mueller Bhavan, Calcutta.

5. In 1969, Ranjan Ghosh adapted The Caucasian Chalk Circle. In the early seventies it was once again adapted by Mihir Chatterjee. In the late seventies it was adapted simultaneously by Rudraprasad Sengupta and Badal Sircar. At the same time it was also translated by Subroto Nandy.

6. Arun Mukhopadhyay, Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay, and Asoke Sen were directors who adapted and translated the play for production. Pralay Sur and Rajen Das tried their hand at adapting the play into Bengali.

7. Thejatra troupe was called Loknatyadal; the version of Datta's translation they performed was entitled Muktidikkha. For more onjatra see note 8.

8. Thejatra is the most prominent of all the forms of folk theatre preva- lent in rural Bengal. It is performed traditionally on a square wooden platform with a wooden gangway at one end leading to an improvised greenroom which the actors use as a passage for entrance and exit. The audience sits on all sides and the performance is held either under the open sky or under a canopy. There are virtually no sets, and lighting is simple and minimal. Music is provided by instrumentalists sitting around the platform on wooden ramps. These players often join in when the actors are rendering songs. Costume and other accessories involve a lot of rough improvisation.

Time and space in thejatra are extremely fluid. Much of the performance depends on the audience's imagination. There is no attempt to create illusion. The actor often talks directly to the audience, introducing himself, his intention, or his action. He also creates theatrical space-describing the empty stage as a

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dense forest or a turbulent sea. The enactment is frequently interrupted by songs, either sung by the actors or by a type character called Vivek who is the voice of justice, moral order, and conscience rolled into one. He can also enter into dia- logues with a character, providing answers to his internal doubts. Although the subjects of the plays written for the jatra are drawn usually from mythological or historical material, social issues have been used as source material in recent times. Lately the form has been urbanized to a large degree, and at present jatra plays are performed frequently in city auditoriums.

It is in the fluidity and imaginativeness of thejatra form-and in its open admission that it is theatre-that similarities with Brechtian theatre can be dis- cerned. Some observers contend that the interruptions through song or through the appearance of Vivek create a kind of alienation effect.

9. These two productions are Khorir Gondi (adapted and directed by Rudraprasad Sengupta and produced by Nandikar) and Gondi (adapted and directed by Badal Sircar for his group Satabdi).

10. The adaptations of Good Person are Asoke Sen's translation carrying the English title and produced by Sandhyaneer, and Pralay Sur's adaptation entitled Bhalomanusher Meye, which was put on stage in 1971 by the Theater Guild. Other adaptations include Arun Mukhopadhyay's Bhalomanusher Pala, Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay's Bhalomanush, and Rajen Das's Bhalomanusher Gappo (which was never produced).

11. The four translations are Ritwik Ghatak's Galileo Charit, Nihar Bhat- tacharya's Galileo Galilei, Mohit Chattopadhyay's Galileor Jeeban, and Kumar Ray's Galileo. The lone adaptation, Suryasikar, was done by Utpal Datta.

12. There was also another production of The Threepenny Opera sponsored by the Max Mueller Bhavan, Calcutta, and directed by Anjan Dutt.

13. The first few shows of this production were sponsored by Max Muel- ler Bhavan, Calcutta, but shows for the general audience were later produced under the banner of Theater Unit.

14. Keertan is a form of religious vocal music dedicated to Lord Krishna. A chorus of devotees sings these devotional songs on special holy occasions.

15. The Brecht Society of India was formed in 1964 in Calcutta with the internationally famous Bengali film director Satyajit Ray as president and Sova Sen as secretary. Among the patrons was Brecht's wife, Helena Weigel. Utpal Datta was among the founding members.

16. Datta explains alienation or estrangement by a single formula: Familiar + Unfamiliar -* Deeper Familiarity or Understanding

He demonstrates that this process is related to the Thesis + Antithesis - Synthe- sis of Hegelian-Marxist dialectical theory.

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Strittmatter, Erwin. 1967. "Brecht at Work." Theatre in GDR. Berlin: Kunst und Gesellschaft.

Willett, John, ed. and trans. 1978. The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht: A Study from Eight Aspects. London: Eyre Methuen. 1979.

Brecht on Theatre. London: Methuen.

Williams, Raymond. 1976.

Dramafrom Ibsen to Brecht. London: Penguin Books. Witt, Hubert, ed. 1977.

Brecht As They Knew Him. Berlin: Seven Seas Publishers.

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brecht adaptation in drama

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