Recently Vijay Tendulkar’s Ghashiram Kotwal, a contemporary classic, was staged in Delhi and the response of the theatregoers was overwhelming. People are still enamoured by scheming, lecherous Nana and the transformation of Ghashiram from a simple, small town boy into a lusty monster. More importantly, the content and the form of the play mingle, become indistinguishable from each other and a space is created where the magic of the theatre becomes a distinct possibility. Age-old traditions of Marathi folk theatre, confronted with a modern sensibility, create a work of crystalline originality. Vijay Tendulkar, apart from being a hard-working and highly talented playwright, is a courageous man. He has the courage to create.

Tendulkar was certainly not alone. He had peers. Girish Karnad, Badal Sarkar, Mohan Rakesh and not to forget the grand old man of Kannada theatre, Adya Rangacharya — they were all writing meaningful plays in new, innovative forms, which immediately captivated the imagination of young actors and directors and, through them the audiences. And thus a theatre was created, which creatively responded to the melancholic mood of the disillusioned India of the sixties. These individuals formed the peaks in the landscape, but there were others too, though much less known, creating little gems of theatrical writings of their own.

But what happened after that? A deluge?

In seminar after seminar, theatrepersons bemoan the complete absence of new and original plays in Indian languages and the golden sixties are remembered with nostalgia. The reasons for the decline, they say, are many. Lack of financial resources, absence of professional and semi-professional theatre groups devoted to good theatre, bad unusable theatre spaces and irrational theatre education, are some of the reasons commonly cited. Those who wish to make a more profound statement blame the shifting trends in post-modern theatre.

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