Theatre in India by Balwant Gargi (review)

1964 BOOK REVIEWS 471 THEATRE IN INDIA, by Balwant Gargi, Theatre Arts Books, New York, 1962, 245 pp. Price $6·95. Some ten years ago Mulk Raj Anand's little sixty page book, The Indian Theatre, attempted to describe to English speaking people the chief characteristics of the drama of the main cultural areas of India. Since that time Faubion Bowers and Beryl de Zoeta have written about the Indian stage. But for the most part, the American theater person knows little or nothing about a theater that is as varied as are the peoples of India. Balwant Gargi, playwright and critic, has tried the impossible. His new book is longer and fuller, and Theatre Arts has given it a charming format with interesting line drawings and representative photographs. One feels as if he were reading an encyclopedia, so great is the diversity of subjects and the need for brief and adequate explanation for completely ignorant people. To the uninitiated almost every word used by theater persons in India needs relevant definition . To Americans woefully uninformed about dance as interpretation and communication , Indian theater is a mystery. Mr. Gargi tries to be obliging in his presentation, and his book intrigues for the same reason that encyclopedias intrigue -there is so much variety and often wonder in the strangeness of subject matter and the extraordinary number of things one does not know even when he has lived in India for some time. Theatre in India would be a stronger book if there were more wonder and a more detailed explanation of what it is in the theater. Unfortunately, Mr. Gargi is often prosaic and labored, or else he resorts to decorated and elaborate speech using overblown description. There is too much that is too strange. His short chapter on Tagore's plays is inadequate and disappointing. The intricate and complicated legends, varying in each area, that are told through dramatic action using dance, music, and speech are so generic to the people of the area that they ostracize the outlander merely in the naming of them. One finds himself trying to figure out one form of dancing or one series of legends only to be frustrated by the addition of still others. This is not Mr. Gargi's fault, to be sure, but it is accentuated in a short book. Many things of great value are present in this book. The introductory chapters try to familiarize the reader with the traditional theater while the second part attempts to make judgments about what is happening in the modem and current theater. Certainly this is needed for American readers and for all those who recognize how little they know about theater in the Orient and southern Asia. The chapters on modem dance, the People's Theatre, children's theater, and recent trends throughout the vast country are an introduction that cannot lead to acquaintanceship because the basic understanding of what the theater is and why it is so different from that in America is possible only with audience participation and fuller knowledge of the place of theater in the life of India. Certainly we need to be aware of what has gone on, and we need to be keenly aware of the changes that are taking place in the cultural life of India. This is a very diiflicult time-it is also a very exciting time in India. Just what part the theater will play, no one knows. The ferment is there, and as Rosamond Gilder said after her visit to the Theatre Conference in Bombay, if Brahma the Creator conceived of theater in his meditations as a way of bringing joy to mankind, it will not die. A new theater is in the making in India today. HAROlD EH1tENSPERGJ!'.R Boston University ...