Shyamanand Jalan | |
|---|---|
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| Born | (1934-01-13)13 January 1934 |
| Died | 24 May 2010(2010-05-24) (aged 76) |
| Alma mater | Scottish Church College, Calcutta |
| Occupations | theatre director, actor |
| Years active | 1949–2009 |
| Organization | Vice-ChairmanSangeet Natak Akademi (1999–2004) |
| Known for | Founder-directorPadatik (1972) theatre group |
Shyamanand Jalan (13 January 1934 – 24 May 2010) was aKolkata-basedIndian theatre director, and actor.[1] He is credited for the renaissance period of modernIndian theatre and especially theHindi theatre in Kolkata from the 1960s to 1980s. He was the first to perform modernistMohan Rakesh, starting withAshadh Ka Ek Din (One Day in Ashad) in 1960[2] and in the coming years bridged the gap between Hindi theatre andBengali theatre, by mounting Hindi productions of works by Bengali playwrights, likeBadal Sircar'sEvam Indrajit (1968) andPagla Ghora (1971), which in turn introduced Sircar to rest of the country.[3][4][5] His big screen ventureEashwar Mime Co. (2005) was an adaptation ofDibyendu Palit's story,Mukhabhinoy, byVijay Tendulkar.[5]
As an actor in stage plays, he appeared as the don inRoland Joffe's 1992 filmCity of Joy. He also worked withparallel cinema directors. He acted inMrinal Sen's television series,Tasveer Apni Apni, and later inArohan byShyam Benegal,Kahan Kahan Se Guzar Gaya byMS Sathyu, andChokh (1982) byUtpalendu Chakrabarty.
He co-founded theatre groupAnamika in 1955,impresario organisationAnamika Kala Sangam in 1967, and later in 1972, he left Anamika to form his ownPadatik theatre group, of which he remained director for the rest of his life; Padatik Dance Center was launched in 1989, a school for Classical and Contemporary Dance in Kolkata. He received the 1972Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for Direction, awarded by theSangeet Natak Akademi, India's National Academy of Music, Dance & Drama,[6] and later remained the vice-chairman of the Akademi (1999–2004).[7][8]
Born in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, to a Kolkata-basedMarwari family of Ishwari Prasad Jalan who was a solicitor by profession and later turned to politics,[9][10] Jalan studied at theScottish Church College of theUniversity of Calcutta, and was a part of theBurrabazar Students' Congress.[7][8]
Jalan started his career as a lawyer and subsequently headed a legal firm in Kolkata, and at the same time also worked both as a theatre actor and director.[citation needed]
He started his acting career with playNaya Samaj in 1949, followed bySamasya (1951) directed by Tarun Roy in 1951. He directed his playEk Thi Rajkumari (1953), a children's play, written by Roy, in Hindi. This was followed byKonark (1954) byJagdish Chandra Mathur andChandragupta (1955) by Seth Govind Das. He continued to act in most of his plays, sometimes playing the lead and even into his later years.[citation needed]
He was the first theatre director to recognise the plays ofMohan Rakesh, when he staged hisAshadh Ka Ek Din (One Day in Ashadh) in 1960,[2][3] which had a competition organised by theSangeet Natak Akademi in 1959, and was soon established as the first modern Hindi play. This was also a breakthrough play for Jalan as well, as for the first time he was able to showcase an in-depth study of the complexity of human existence, to critical acclaim.[11] He subsequently stagedLehron Ke Rajhans (Swans of the Waves) in 1966 andAdhe Adhure (Halfway House) (1970), where he and his wife Chetna played the leads. His Hindi productions captured the magical realism of Bengali playwrightBadal Sircar'sEvam Indrajit (1968),Pagla Ghora (Mad Horse) in 1971 in brought Sircar to national limelight. He was equally adept in handling harsh realism of Marathi playwrightVijay Tendulkar'sSakhārām Binder andKhamosh Adalat Jari Hai (Hindi version ofShantata! Court Chalu Aahe),Panchi Aise Aate Hain (Thus Arrive the Birds) from hisAshi Pakhare Yeti in Marathi in 1971,Gidhade (The Vultures) in 1973 andKanyadan (1987).[5]
His other plays includeKauva Chala Hans ki Chal, Gyandev Agnihotri'sShuturmurg (Ostrich) (1967) and a production of Romanian playwrightMihail Sebastian's Breaking News asChhapte chhapte (Going to Print) in 1963, in the arena format.
His production displayed his respect for the script as he didn't alter a word, and over the year he started a collaborative approach towards his productions with the playwright, a new trend in Indian theatre. He often invited playwrights to the rehearsals, Mohan Rakesh who had been sceptical to excessive directorial influence on the integrity of the drama-in-performance, spent three weeks with the group, in Kolkata ahead of the 1966 production ofLehron Ke Rajhans, and even rewrote the third act several times, completed two days before the opening night of the production, and revised it yet again before its publication in late 1966,[12][13] and in time it became one of the important productive playwright-director relationship in Indian theatre.[14] While working onEvam Indrajit he extensively collaborated with Sircar.[15]
He co-founded theatre groupAnamika in 1955 withPratibha Agrawal, a Hindi writer and a great granddaughter ofBhartendu Harishchandra, which played a pioneering role in the revival of Hindi theatre.[3] and remained with it till 1972, and during this period it created a large audience for Hindi theatre in Bengali speaking Kolkata. At the time,Usha Ganguly ofRangakarmee' was only other director, to be actively involved in Hindi theatre in the city, just asSatyadev Dubey was in Bombay.[16][17]
He co-established the impresario institutionAnamika Kala Sangam in 1967.[18] Subsequently, along with his wife Chetana Jalan, the well-known Kathak dancer and stage actress, and actorKulbhushan Kharbanda, he left Anamika in 1971 and establishedPadatik (literally foot-soldier) theatre group in 1972, of which he was the founding director. This gave him a chance to venture into bolder themes, like those in Vijay Tendukar's plays likeGidhade (The Vultures) (1973) andSakharam Binder (1979), andMahashweta Devi'sHazar Chaurasi Ki Ma (Mother of 1084) (1978), with his new venture he stepped beyond Indianism, modernism, or experimentalism. Padatik in the coming years, started inviting outside directors like, Ranjit Kapoor, Satyadev Dubey, Bennevitz, Rajinder Nath, and Rodney Marriot, and soon the group was performing three productions in a year.[2][7][17] In time, dramatic speech and theatricality became the hallmark of Padatik plays and most notably Badal Sircar'sEvam Indrajit (And Indrajit) remembered for its stylised movement and speech.[19]
Along with his wife he founded Padatik dance school in Kolkata, for classical as well as contemporary dance.[20] He also remained associated withNatya Shodh Sasthan Kolkata, an archive of Indian theatre for many years. Long before trend government funded festivals started, he organised the first performing arts festival, a "Chhau Festival" bringing together three forms ofChhau dance, i.e. Seraikella,Mayurbanj, Purulia, together on one platform, in March 1977 in Kolkata.Padatik also organised workshops on dance, lec-dems of Gurus of Indian dance including Kelucharan Mohapatra, Vempati Chinna Satyam, Guru Bipin Singh, Birju Maharaj, apart from organising three major international theatre, dance, martial arts conferences in which theatre personalities likePeter Brook,Eugenio Barba,Tadashi Suzuki,Richard Schechner,Anna Halprin and leading theatre directors and actors from all over India, participated.[21][22]
He also acted in Bengali productions, likeTughlaq (1972), a Bengali version ofGirish Karnad's play performed by Padatik under his own direction,[23] for Pashchimbanga Natya Unnayan Samity, which featured stage actors, likeSombhu Mitra, Debabrata Dutta andRudraprasad Sengupta. He is credited for not only reviving Hindi theatre in Kolkata, but also by performing plays by Bengali playwrights likeBadal Sircar'sPaagla Ghoda andEvam Indrajit in Hindi, bridging the gap between North Indian and Bengali theatre.[4] He broughtKalidasa`s Sanskrit playAbhijñānaśākuntalam asSakuntala to stage in 1980 with lyrical dance movements ofOdissi,[24] andG. P. Deshpande`s politically charged Marathi-playUddhwasta Dharmashala (A Man in Dark Times) in 1982.
He translated plays byHenrik Ibsen likeJanta ka Shatru (An Enemy of the People) in 1959,Brecht,Raja Lear fromShakespeare'sKing Lear, andMoliere'sThe Bourgeois Gentleman andThe School for Wives.[25] He adaptedRabindranath Tagore,Ghare Baire (Home and Outside) in 1961, and dramatisedMahashweta Devi's classic novelHazar Churashir Ma (Mother of 1084) asHazar Chaurasi Ki Ma in 1978. He later worked as the vice-chairman of theSangeet Natak Akademi from 1999 to 2004.,[8] and as the chairman of theKathak Kendra, New Delhi andScience City and theBirla Industrial & Technological Museum (BITM), Kolkata. He had also been governing body member of theNational Council of Science Museums.[15] He also directedRamkatha Ram-Kahani (1995), performed by dancers from Padatik Dance Centre, under Chetna Jalan.[26]
In 2005, he directed first and only filmEashwar Mime Co., an adaptation ofDibyendu Palit's story,Mukhabhinoy, by Vijay Tendulkar. The film is story of a travelling mime company selling products and a writer's views upon its journey, it has two leadAshish Vidyarthi playing the role mime company's owner whilePawan Malhotra did the role of the writer. Though it didn't get commercial released during his lifetime, it was screened atDurban International Film Festival, the3 Continents Festival and theKolkata Film Festival.[5][27]
Nearly 42 years after he first presented Mohan Rakesh'sLehron Ke Rajhans, he presented a new version, at theBharat Rang Mahotsav of the National School of Drama in 2009, to critical acclaim. The brochure of play reproduced two letters, one written by Jalan asking the playwright for clarifications and guidelines, and in the second the reply of Rakesh two months later, in fact after their discussions he rewrote third act.[15][28]
He died after a long illness at Kolkata on 24 May 2010, survived by his wife and six children.[15]
His filmEashwar Mime Co. (2005), based on the art ofmime, was premiered atIndia Habitat Centre, New Delhi on 2 August 2010,[29][30] thereafter with a special screening on 11 September 2010 atNandan theatre in Kolkata, the film was commercially released.[27][31]Padatik constituted the "Shyamanand Jalan National Youth Theatre Award" for original scripts from Indian playwrights aged between 18 and 25 years, in 2011.[32]
On 4 December 2010, a bookShyamanand Jalan: A Pictorial Tribute by Madhuchhanda Chatterjee, was released atRabindra Sadan, Kolkata, followed by excerpts of some plays directed by him, enacted by actors he trained, or organised by Anamika Kala Sangam and Padatik. Also presented wasRemembering Shyamanand by Rajinder Nath, Samik Bandyopadhyay, Pratibha Agrawal & others and a homage by Padatik, and 5th a Seminar titled,Kolkata Hindi Theatre and Shyamanand Jalan was held at the venue followed by a screening of excerpts from his works.[33]
The 13thBharat Rang Mahotsav, the annual theatre festival ofNational School of Drama featured a special section on him. On 20 January 2011 atKamani Auditorium, Delhi, a retrospective-homage by Padatik, directed by Vinay Sharma, presented excerpts from five plays directed by Shyamanand Jalan, showcasing at least one representative work from each decade of thePadatik years, includingMadhavi (2006),Ramkatha Ram-Kahani (1995),Adhey Adhurey (1983) andSakharam Binder (1978).[34][35]
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