1 Worthen, W. B., Shakespeakre and the Authority of Performance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, elucidates how these concepts act as tools for establishing the authority of the text on performance or of performance on the text.

2 Kidnie, Margaret J., Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, addresses the fraught binary of ‘production–adaptation’ to show how the material dramatic text or its authorial signature serves as authenticating mechanism.

3 I do not use the term ‘dramaturgy’ as a derivative of ‘dramaturg’, a theatre professional whose task of selecting, adapting and analysing plays follows the tradition set by the first dramaturg Gotthold Lessing (1729–81), famous for his Hamburg Dramaturgy (1767–9). By ‘dramaturgy’ I mean the entire structure of words, movements, images, music constituting the mise en scène of a production, and the context of performance determined by its social, political and economic circumstances. Such a distinction would be germane to the context of urban Indian or Bengali theatre, as, more often than not, there is no distinct figure of the dramaturg operating in these theatres, with the functions of dramaturgy generally performed by actor–managers/directors.

4 Mukhopadhyay uses the English term ‘interpretation’ in his essay.

5 ‘How am I supposed to not include at all the beautiful lines written by Tagore, the poet par excellence, in his play? Would it not be grave injustice?’ Heisnam Kanhailal, interview with the author (19 March 2016).

6 Soumen Sengupta, while recollecting his experience of directing and performing in Tagore's plays in and outside Santiniketan as a member of the Santiniketan-based cultural group Sahityika and of a faculty of history at Siksha Satra (one of the two schools functioning under Visva-Bharati), states that any attempt to interpret Tagore's plays politically is scorned by audiences everywhere, even when such issues are pronounced explicitly in the playtext. He explains that Visva-Bharati's insistence on staging Tagore's plays representing a certain Tagorian (Rabindrik) ‘lyrical’ mode of aesthetics has created a generic template which, when challenged, invites disapproval from the audience. Any emphasis on the political is looked at as a jarring disruption. Soumen Sengupta, interview with the author (31 October 2019).

7 A historical instance is Tagore's letter to Charles Freer Andrews (written from New York on 4 November 1920) in the historical context of Gandhi's non-cooperation movement. While Tagore was travelling abroad, he had put Andrews in charge of the Visva-Bharati. Tagore, critical of the movement, wrote to Andrews after learning about Gandhi's visit to the university in his absence. ‘Keep Santiniketan away from the turmoils [sic] of politics. I know that, political problem is growing in intensity in India and its encroachment is difficult to resist. But all the same we must never forget that our mission is not political.’ Quoted in Prashanta Kumar Pal, Rabijibani, Vol. VIII (Kolkata: Ananda, 2011), p. 83.

8 Articulation of such revision can be found as early as his play Rather Rashi (1932) and the essays in Kalantar (1937), and would take final bold expression in his last public address, ‘Crisis in Civilisation’ (1941).

9 Pouranikota refers to a quasi-mythological world that Tagore creates in his plays. While Bengali playwrights before him, like Girish Chandra Ghosh, Jyotirindranath Tagore and others, had written mythological plays, a radical departure in the treatment of the mythical subject is noted in Tagore's Santiniketan-phase plays. In Jyotirindranath's or Girish's plays the Hindu mythological past would often be brought forth for valorization and feeding into the Hindu nationalist ideological project. Tagore, however, through his pouranikota, would on the one hand subvert such usage and on the other critically comment on the sociopolitical reality of his own times.

10 Mukhopadhyay, Suman, Bohurupee, Vol. CXVI (Kolkata: Bohurupee, 2011), p. 59Google Scholar.

11 Suman Mukhopadhyay, interview with the author (7 February 2015).

12 The Music Board was founded after Tagore's demise in 1944, upon the initiative of his son Rathindranath Tagore. The functions of the board are clearly detailed in its charter of objectives listed by Rathindranath Tagore, then in charge of Visva-Bharati, in a letter dated 13 July 1943, where he proposes the idea of the board to the Samsad or the contemporary Governing Body of Visva-Bharati:

1. 1.

   1. To build a library of disc records (both negative and positive) in order to preserve the songs of the Founder in preserving their authentic tunes. The different gramophone companies in Calcutta could be approached for cooperation in the matter.

2. 2.

   2. To teach Rabindra sangeet outside Santiniketan under the direct control of Visva-Bharati.

3. 3.

   3. To set up in Calcutta a central organization to supervise and coordinate the work of different music schools teaching Rabindra music.

4. 4.

   4. To appoint a small executive to look after the interests of the owner of the music and performance rights, to veto and approve recorded versions of the music by the Founder President (Rabindranath Tagore), and to take such steps as are calculated to diffuse [sic] and popularize them. See File No. RBVB-016 VBP, Visva-Bharati Samsad Proceedings, Rabindra Bhavana Archives, Visva-Bharati.

13 Bohurupee Raktakarabi: Panchas Bachar, Vol. CIV (Kolkata: Bohurupee, 2005), pp. 80–100.

14 The letter, dated 24 November 1954, said, ‘Your group is permitted to stage Raktakarabi in future, contingent on abiding by the following conditions:

1. 1.

   1. While staging you will not add upon or edit out any section from the text of the original play.

2. 2.

   2. While staging, you will design the costumes keeping in accordance with the original play.’ Ibid. p. 98.

15 See the review ‘Bohurupeer Raktakarabi’, Anandabazar Patrika, 13 July 1954, p. 7.

16 The researcher has been denied access to the Visva-Bharati Music Board files which could have provided further instances of censorship. According to the university authorities these files have not yet been made public.

17 Before 2001 (in the Bengali context), Utpal Dutt, Asit Mukhopadhyay and Arun Mukhopdhyay produced one Tagore play each. For a detailed production history of Tagore's plays in Bengal until 2000 see Lal, Ananda, ‘Tagore in Kolkata Theatre: 1986–2000’, in Dasgupta, Sanjukta, Mukhopadhyay, Ramkinkar and Ganguly, Swati, eds., Towards Tagore (Kolkata: Visva-Bharati, 2014), pp. 515–48Google Scholar.

18 Tripti Mitra, legendary actress and founder member of Bohurupee, was formally invited to Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, by then vice chancellor Amlan Dutta to design a production of Tagore's play Dakghar (Post Office) with the students in 1981–2. After the production was staged, Shantideb Ghosh, a retired professor of Sangeet Bhavan, the performance department at Visva-Bharati, and an authority as far as performing Tagore's plays is concerned, wrote a scathing review of the production for the Bengali daily Ajkal (10 February 1982). In the review, he termed the production a ‘total failure’, alleging that it deliberately distorted the play and Tagore's dramaturgy of it.

19 See the interview with Kalim Sharafi titled ‘The Custodian of Rabindrasangeet’ published in the e-edition of The Daily Star, 15 January 1999, at www.thedailystar.net/news/the-custodian-of-rabindrasangeet, accessed 26 October 2019.

20 Before 2001, there are a few instances where individualistic ways of singing or experimentation with Tagore's songs have attracted contention and censorship. Among the modern-era Rabindra sangeet singers, Pijush Kanti Sarkar for one has received scorn from both Visva-Bharati and Bengali intelligentsia alike for his distinctly individualistic rendering of the songs. While Tagore songs have featured in numerous Bengali and Hindi films before 2001, the majority have tried to follow the original tune and lyrics (even when translated) closely. In a few cases, however, where they have deviated from the template, they have invited criticism. A case in point is the Hindi film Yugpurush (1998), which included two Hindi versions of popular Rabindra sangeets. One of them, ‘Bandhan Khula Panchhi Udaa’ (original Bengali, ‘Pagla Hawar Badal Dine’), created controversy for not following the lyrics closely enough. Since 2001, Tagore's songs too have been increasingly experimented with in various films and television adaptations, often creating controversy for their deviance.

21 Only a small number of film and television adaptations of Tagore's works were produced before the expiry of the copyright in 2001. These were mostly done by exceptionally reputed directors like Bimal Roy, Satyajit Ray, Gulzar and Kumar Sahani, who could expect to circumvent censorship from Visva-Bharati. However, even Satyajit Ray had to face criticism for allegedly distorting Tagore's short story Nashta Neer for his film adaptation Charulata (1964). Since 2001, there have been numerous film and television adaptations in the Bengali and pan-Indian context. These adaptations, though not always of great aesthetic quality, have in many cases paved the way for the breaking of conventions as far as staging Tagore's works is concerned.

22 For a production history of Tagore's plays being staged in Kolkata since the year 2000 see Lal, Ananda, ‘Kolkata Theatre-e Rabindra Natya: 1986–2010’, in Paschimbanga Natya Akademi Patrika, Vol. XV: Rabindra Natya Sankha (Kolkata: Paschimbanga Natya Akademi, August 2012), pp. 37–73Google Scholar.

23 Dakshinee, a music school, has involved legendary Rabindra sangeet exponents like Subinoy Roy and Suchitra Mitra among the first batch of teachers.

24 A group of concerned art lovers got together in 2005 under the name Happenings with the ‘quixotic task of preparing and presenting a different perception of Bengal’ (Program Book for Happenings, 2012, p. 2, from the private collection of Indrani Roy Mishra) by re-creating traditional cultural expressions. In 2006 – with the urging and mentorship of the late theatre stalwart Habib Tanvir, and under the guidance of renowned theatre, film and art critic Samik Bandyopadhyay – they decided to take on the ambitious project of organizing a theatre festival dedicated exclusively to Tagore's work. In an effort to bring together not only Bengali but multiple regional theatrical perspectives on Tagore, they invited established theatre practitioners from around India to participate in the festival. Among the productions were Habib Tanvir's adaptation of Bisarjan titled Raj-Rakt, Suman Mukhopadhyay's Raktakarabi, Ratan Thiyam's King of the Dark Chamber and Heisnam Kanhailal's Dakghar. In the coming years, Happenings would continue to present courageous and intriguing adaptations of Tagore's works tuned to contemporary aesthetics and sensibility. Its curatorial creativity proves to be the crucial pathbreaker for more stagings of Tagore's work around the country.

25 Mukhopadhyay, Bohurupee, Vol. CXVI, p. 60.

26 Ibid., p. 61.

27 In his essay Sahityer Dharma (Principles of Literature) (1927), Tagore vehemently criticizes contemporary, young Bengali writers for adapting an imported brand of realism. According to him such realism is unconstrained in its language and content and does not care for the formal conventions of art. Tagore categorically points out that certain expressions and themes are not respectable enough to find a place in literature.

28 A poem titled ‘Rup-Birup’ (Against Beauty), written in 1940, for instance, expresses such sentiments.

29 In Raktakarabi, Mukhopadhyay places a fence of barbed wire in front of the stage, between the actors and the audience, to invoke the idea of the ghetto, as well as to refer to the alienation of modern life. In Bisarjan too, he attempts to bring the mise en scène into play through a tilted platform on which the action takes place in the production, indicating a state and a society in turmoil and imbalance. There are other details too in Bisarjan in the form of projections and properties to indicate that he is drawing a parallel between the world of the play and the contemporary reality of Bengal afflicted by political violence.

30 Uttariya – a longish scarf – was originally used in dance performances in Java. When Rabindranath Tagore and other artists and designers working at Santiniketan like Surendranath Kar visited Java in the early twentieth century they were impressed by the performances. Consequently they introduced multiple elements from Javanese tradition in performances at Santiniketan. As a part of costume, a major addition was the uttariya. The uttariya was usually dyed in the batik technique, which also was imported from Java to Santiniketan. See Kar, Surendranath, ‘Srmiticharon’, in Shome, Shobhan, ed., Rathindraparikar Surendranath Kar (Kolkata: Anustup, 1992), pp. 1–11Google Scholar.

31 Kirtan is a form of popular, indigenous, religious, music and dance performance. There are multiple variations of kirtan performance which can be found across India. The Bengali kirtan is linked with the Vaishnavism cult and owes its origin to the bhakti movement in Bengal which reached its zenith in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One of the main proponents of the movement and an avid performer was Chaitanya.

32 Supriyo Tagore, interview with the author (5 July 2012).

33 Sahityika, Santiniketan in 2011, and Lalit Kala Kendra, Department of Performing Arts, Savitribhai Phule Pune University in 2012, staged Phalguni with the prologue included.

34 Schneider, Rebecca, Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Renenactment (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, debunks the fallacious binary of archive/repertoire as formulated in Taylor, Diana, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Schneider argues that there is nothing fixed or constant about the archive, which an archival logic of thinking tries to assert, but rather the archive also exists only through a series of performances – a perpetual series of reappearances.

35 See Kidnie's, Margaret Jane essay ‘Where Is Hamlet? Text, Performance and Adaptation’, in Hodgdon, Barbara and Worthen, W. B., eds., A Companion to Shakespeare and Performance (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 101–20Google Scholar.

36 Kämpchen, Martin, Happenings Programme Book (Kolkata: Happenings, 2013), p. 20Google Scholar. From the private collection of Indrani Roy Mishra.