Theatre Without Walls
In 1967, a Bengali playwright named Badal Sircar did something radical: he walked out of the proscenium theatre and never properly returned. His decision to perform in parks, slums, factories, and streets — without tickets, without stages, without the separation between performer and audience that conventional theatre requires — was not a stunt or a publicity gesture. It was a philosophical position about what theatre is for and who it belongs to.
Badal Sircar (1925–2011) called this approach Anganmancha — “yard theatre” — and later, as the movement developed, the Third Theatre. His influence on Indian theatre is profound and ongoing: every director in India who performs outside conventional theatre spaces is working in a tradition he established.
Evam Indrajit: The Play That Changed Everything
Before his turn to street theatre, Sircar created one of the most significant plays in modern Indian dramatic literature. Evam Indrajit (And Indrajit, 1962) is a remarkable work of meta-theatrical self-examination — a play about a writer struggling to create characters who break free of the conventional theatrical roles assigned to them. The protagonist Indrajit refuses the plotlines of marriage, career success, and social conformity that society and the playwright both attempt to impose on him.
The play was a direct confrontation with the Bengali intellectual’s entrapment in colonial modernity — the Amal-Vimal-Kamal figures (named for their interchangeability) who follow prescribed social trajectories without ever questioning whether those trajectories are worth following. It remains one of the most performed Indian plays in Hindi and Bengali theatre.
The Third Theatre Movement
Sircar distinguished between three types of theatre: First Theatre (commercial, entertainment-focused), Second Theatre (the serious repertory theatre of the urban educated class, playing in conventional proscenium spaces), and Third Theatre — theatre that belongs to everyone, performed anywhere, requiring nothing but performers and audience.
His company Satabdi (Century) developed a practice of performing in the round, in parks, in neighbourhoods, without microphones, without elaborate lighting, without sets. The stripped-back conditions placed total emphasis on the actor’s body, voice, and relationship with the audience. This created an intensity and intimacy that conventional theatre spaces make difficult.
Spartacus and Political Theatre
Many of Sircar’s later works addressed political themes — the Spartacus slave revolt, Vietnam, the exploitation of rural workers — through the physical, non-illusionist theatre language he had developed. These works used minimal means to maximum emotional and intellectual effect, demonstrating that political theatre doesn’t require spectacle to be powerful.
Influence on Contemporary Indian Theatre
Sircar’s Third Theatre principles have influenced generations of Indian theatre practitioners who work outside conventional spaces. The street theatre tradition associated with organizations like Jana Natya Manch (see our guide to Indian street theatre) shares many of his concerns about accessibility and community engagement, though with a more explicitly political orientation.
His insistence that theatre’s primary purpose is human connection — not spectacular entertainment or cultural prestige — remains a challenging proposition for an art form that is increasingly driven by production values and institutional sponsorship.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Third Theatre in India?
Third Theatre is the term coined by Badal Sircar for a form of theatre that performs outside conventional theatre spaces — in parks, streets, factories, and communities — without tickets, stages, or the physical separation between performer and audience that proscenium theatre requires. It was developed as a response to both commercial theatre (First Theatre) and elite urban repertory theatre (Second Theatre).
What is Badal Sircar’s most important play?
Evam Indrajit (And Indrajit, 1962) is generally considered his most significant work — a meta-theatrical examination of the Bengali intellectual’s entrapment in social conformity that remains widely performed in Indian theatre today.