Parallel Interplay between Tradition and Folk Theatre: A Study of select works of Vijay Tendulkar

Abstract

Folk theatre is the root of modern Indian drama, and with the advancement of modernity, folk theatre keeps balancing the dynamic aspect of modernity. Most of India's well-known playwrights overcame the limitations of regional language throughout the 1970s and produced a number of excellent plays on a national scale. The majority of their experimental productions were focused on incorporating Indian folk theatre components or performance traditions into mainstream theatre. As a result, we see Utpal Dutt using Jatra in Surya Sikar and Girish Karnad adopting Yakshagna, a traditional type of theatre, in his play Hayavadana (1972). In order to create a new type of theatre that he called the "Third Theatre" or "Street Theatre", Badal Sircar experimented with incorporating folk elements into proscenium theatres. Similar to his contemporaries, Vijay Tendulkar also experimented with many types of folk drama in Ghasiram Kotwal (1972) and other plays. The current study is an integrated effort to concentrate on how tradition and modernity are portrayed in Vijay Tendulkar's plays. Another way to put it is that modernity has economic, social, cultural, and political ramifications. A cultural driving force with social, economic, and political ramifications is tradition. Vijay Tendulkar explores both conventional and contemporary tendencies in his plays through folk theatre. In his plays, he combines elements of heritage and modernism. They are entangled with both modernity and tradition. One may easily notice Tendulkar's keen observation of life in his plays . He strikes a delicate balance between tradition and contemporary in expressing the social realities . The purpose of this article is try to understand how Tendulkar employed various folk theatre styles to express power dynamics and the outcome of oppression, a very modern and postcolonial subject, on stage.