THEATRE
ristic of the period following the First World War. Remain Rolland, whose idea of a ^people's theatre" as an alternative to decadent bourgeois theatre may have been at work behind the inception of the IPTA, had thought of it mainly as theatre for the peopfe. But in the Indian context the term came to have a richer significance, because in a semi-feudal set-up, the tardy growth of industrial capitalism has ensured a longer lease of life to indigenous forms of folk culture. In many instances, they have survived, though in a moribund form, and have not virtually gone out of existence as in the advanced capitalist countries of Europe. And in the first bulletin of the IPTA it was resolved on this basis to build up a theatre not only for the people, but also of the people and by the people. 'It is not a movement which is imposed from above but one which has its roots deep down in the cultural awakening of the masses of India... which seeks to revive the lost in that heritage by interpreting, adopting and integrating it with the most significant facts of our people's lives and aspirations in the present epoch.'3
The main task of the people's theatre movement as the IPTA bulletin saw it was to coordinate, even to some extent anticipate two demands that were taking shape spontaneously out of the cultural scene:
(a) the demand for new experimentations in dramatic forms which the commercial theatre, bound by the naturalistic conventions of the nineteenth century European stage it was modelled on, did not allow; (b) the demand for the presentation in drama of contemporary reality as it emerged out- of the democratic struggles of people all over the world against imperialism and fascism. Its organizational character enabled the IPTA to explore alternative cultural formations still prevalent in non-urban areas and to establish a link between the traditional and the contemporary. Appropriation of such genres as the Kabigan, while keeping intact their vitality in relation to their true milieu in society came to be? contemplated. Theideawas for cultural activists to go to the people and to activate tliem to create new theatrical forms for themselves.
'People's Theatre', it is quite clear, represented an ideal yet to be achieved. Though it is not explicit in the theoretical framework of the IPTA bulletin,the activities of the IPTA in the 1940s lead towards a wholly new conception of the relationship with the consumers of culture. In fact, Professor Hiren Mukherjee's speech at the 1943 conference openly declares battle against the commercialization of the performing arts.4 Where entertainment is a commodity controlled by large private owners and the constraint of the so-called "laws of the market' operates upon it, the relationship between the actual producers of culture and its consumers remains a restricted one. The fetishism of commodities'
6 January - March 1983