Asian Theatre Journal

Abstract:

This essay focuses on a two-fold conceptualization of theatre making pertaining to the production of Galileor Jibon (Life of Galileo, 1980), a Bengali translation of Bertolt Brecht's Leben des Galilei, by the Kolkata-based theatre group Calcutta Repertory Theatre in association with Fritz Bennewitz, a Brecht "expert" from the German Democratic Republic. The two-fold conceptualizations hinge around the contradictions regarding, on the one hand, the application of the Brechtian "model" of theatrical practices as espoused by Bennewitz and, on the other, its simultaneous contestations brought forward by the actual realizations of the actor's practices, as particularized by Shombhu Mitra, the actor playing Galileo. At stake here is an appraisal of a Marxist cultural practice within the period of cold-war mobilizations in the global South as might be exemplified in this particular theatre project involving Fritz Bennewitz.