Tag Archives: Habib Tanvir – Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship Award

How Habib Tanvir forged his own unique path in theatre

Raipur, CHHATTISGARH / Mumbai / Bhopal, MADHYA PRADESH:

At The Hindu Lit fest 2024, Sudhanva Deshpande recalls the making of Habib Tanvir’s company Naya Theatre and his plays that are regarded as masterpieces.

Habib Tanvir | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives

To make theatre that was authentic to its cultural milieu and history while also being thoroughly modern, both in content and form — this was Habib Tanvir’s life’s achievement. His theatre was exuberant, festive, celebratory, funny, moving, thoughtful and reflective. It was progressive and secular, and because it was created by a man with a Muslim name, it was reviled and attacked by Hindutva forces. He worked with rural actors to create plays that appealed to audiences far beyond the rural. In the history of Indian theatre, Habib Tanvir was a singular presence.

Born in Raipur in 1923, he went to Bombay to pursue a career in films in the mid-1940s. But the decisive influence on him at the time was his entry into the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA), where he met and befriended artistes such as Balraj Sahni, Dina Gandhi (later Pathak), Zohra Segal, and M.S. Sathyu. The left-wing perspective of IPTA was to stay with him throughout his life, even though he forged his own unique path in theatre.

A scene from Habib Tanvir’s Agra Baazar staged at ‘Habib Utsav’ in Bhopal on November 21, 2009. | Photo Credit: A.M. Faruqui

The film industry disillusioned him. It worshipped money, not art. He came to Delhi, where he joined Hindustani Theatre, where he met Moneeka Misra, a theatre director trained in the U.S. They fell in love and got married.

In 1954, Habib Tanvir wrote and directed his first masterpiece, Agra Bazaar, on the life and art of the plebeian 19th-century poet Nazir Akbarabadi. It was an astonishing production, for two reasons. One, the protagonist Nazir never appears in the play — because no biographical information about him was available, even as a large corpus of his poetry had survived, passed on orally from generation to generation. Two, Habib Tanvir asked residents of Okhla village on the outskirts of Delhi to act in the play — his first attempt to make theatre with rural folk.

From Charandas Chor by Naya Theatre. Staged in December, 2019 as a curtain- raiser to the first state conference of Network of Artistic Theatre Activists Kerala (Natak) in Ernakulam. | Photo Credit: Thulasi Kakkat

Soon after, he left for Britain to get formally trained as a director, at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA), and the Old Vic. He was in his thirties, with over a decade of theatre work under his belt. What he learnt in Britain, most of all, was what he needed to reject — the overly regimented theatre of the time, realistic in a photographic sort of way, about middle-class life. He longed for the free-flowing, delightful, irreverent theatre that he had enjoyed as a child in Chhattisgarh. He returned to India and set out to find rural actors.

A scene from Habib Tanvir’s play Mrichchakatika. | Photo Credit: The Hindu Archive

The first lot of six rural actors he picked came with him to Delhi in 1958. They were all more or less unlettered, but masters of the Nacha, the rural theatre of Chhattisgarh. They acted and danced with abandon, sang melodiously in their open, strong voices, were masters of farce, and could also move you to tears. With them, and with Moneeka as his companion, he founded his own company, Naya Theatre, in 1959. They produced play after play, touring the country extensively, but while his plays of the time had spark, real success eluded him.

Habib Tanvir watching a play rehearsal. | Photo Credit: Sudhanva Deshpande

It was befuddling. Why were these great actors, who were so delightful when they performed in the villages, so stiff and rigid on the urban stage, he wondered. It took him 15 years, from 1958 to 1973, to figure it out. He was forcing them to speak in Hindustani, a language that was alien to them, and he was ‘directing’ them, telling them where and how to stand, where and when to move, what gestures to use. When he melded together three rural farces into a single play in Gaon ke naon sasural mor naon damad (‘I’m the son-in-law and my in-laws’ house is my village), he asked his actors to speak in Chhattisgarhi and improvise their moves.

It was magic. With their tongues and bodies unshackled, the actors were magnificent. Remarkably, urban audiences, most of whom had no familiarity with Chhattisgarhi, embraced the play. A string of hits followed, many recognised as masterpieces of modern Indian theatre — Charandas Chor (Charan the thief), Mitti Ki Gaadi (Sudraka’s The little clay cart), Bahadur KalarinShajapur Ki Shantibai (Bertolt Brecht’s Good person of szechwan), Hirma ki amar kahani (The immortal tale of Hirma), and Kamdev ka apna, basant ritu ka sapna (Shakespeare’s A midsummer night’s dream).

Habib Tanvir, an artiste-activist, he was committed to the values of secularism and social justice. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

Habib Tanvir was a formidable intellectual with deep insights about the Natyashastra and Indian performing traditions, a sophisticated aesthete who soaked up influences from all over the world, and a citizen-activist committed to values of secularism and social justice.

“In India, the economically poorest are the culturally richest, and the economically richest are the culturally poorest,” he would often say. He devoted his life and his art to uplift the culture, and the voice, of India’s poorest. And he did it with unparalleled verve, beauty, and joy.

Sudhanva Deshpande is an actor, director, and organiser with Jana Natya Manch and Editor with LeftWord Books. He has co-directed two documentary films on Habib Tanvir and is the author of Halla Bol: The Death and Life of Safdar Hashmi.

Session at Literature festival

Sudhanva Deshpande’s session at The Hindu Lit Fest, 2024 is titled ‘Recalling Habib Tanvir: Excerpts from the film and a talk’. It will be held on January 26, 3.15 p.m. at Sir Mutha Concert Hall, Harrington Road, Chetpet, Chennai.

source: http://www.thehindu.com / The Hindu / Home> Lit Fest / by Sudhanva Deshpande / January 16th, 2024

Habib Tanvir, the iconic playwright and director known for his work with tribal artists

CHHATTISGARH / Mumbai, MAHARASHTRA / NEW DELHI :

Habib Tanvir travelled through the interiors of Chhattisgarh, meeting and working with local village artists, and used folk traditions in his plays.

YouTube screengrab of Habib Tanvir


Director, actor, playwright, poet, Habib Tanvir was a man of many colors, all rolled into one. His vibrant personality and talent are fondly remembered by many in theatre and cinema. Tanvir’s plays like Agra BazaarJis Lahore Ni DekhyaCharandas ChorGaon Naam Sasural Mor Naam Damaad, among many others are widely recognised as classics of contemporary Indian theatre.

Actor Naseeruddin Shah once said  that he cites the example of Habib Tanvir as one of those who has guided actors even in their darkest of days. “When I interact with newcomers, I have the example of people like Habib Tanvir, Girish Karnad, Om Puri, Shyam Benegal, Satyadev Dubey. When I was a youngster, they were idols for me” he said.

“I remember Tanvir ji as a very witty man, he would make everyone around him laugh. He would always tell us important things during the production very casually. The first time I met him was when Agra Bazaar was staged at Delhi’s Indraprastha College for women. He had this enigmatic quality that would leave all of us in awe. He would sit in a corner, engrossed in work but would keep a keen eye on everything and everyone. It’s like he would make a small tilt of the head and would know what is going on in the rehearsals. There was an energy about him all the time,” actor Sayani Gupta told ThePrint, remembering her experiences while working with the legendary playwright.

Born on 1 September, in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, Habib Ahmed Khan changed his name to Tanvir after he started writing poetry. After having studied in Aligarh Muslim University, he moved to Bombay in 1945 where he got actively involved with the Indian Peoples’ Theatre Association and the Progressive Writers Association, as a writer, actor and journalist. Nine years later he moved to Delhi, where he delivered his major productions.

In 1959, Tanvir founded the Naya Theatre group, which produced plays using folk performances by native tribal artists of what is now Chhattisgarh. As a writer and director, Tanvir spent years researching folk traditions in drama, music and story-telling. He travelled through the interiors of Chhattisgarh meeting and working with local village artists, and used folk music in his productions.

He was the recipient of a Sangeet Natak Akademi Award in 1969, Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship in 1979, Padma Shri in 1983 and Padma Bhushan in 2002, among other national and international awards during his lifetime.

On his death anniversary, ThePrint looks back at three of his famous plays.

Agra Bazaar

When Tanvir moved to Delhi in 1954, the theatre scene in the national capital was dominated by groups that focused on the 19th and 20th century European models of theatre. His Agra Bazaar stood in complete contrast, in terms of content and form.

Agra Bazaar is a homage to Nazir Akbarabadi, an 18th-century Urdu poet who wrote in a style that was disregarded by poetic norms of his times. Tanvir cast a mix of people — educated middle-class actors, street artists and even regular residents of Okhla village in Delhi and used street language in his play. In fact, the play was first not staged in a confined area or a closed space, but in an actual bazaar.

Gaon Naam Sasural, Mor Naam Damad

Habib Tanvir once said , “This play was like a milestone in my theatre journey and this play also helped me to give a way to my next production, Charandas Chor.”

Gaon Naam Sasural, Mor Naam Damad, first directed by Habib Tanvir in 1973, is a light comedy and folk tale. The story starts with the harvest season festival of Chher-Chhera and revolves around the love of two youngsters, Jhanglu and Manti.

The comedy kicks in when Jhanglu pretends to be a brother-in-law to Manti, and uses tricks to elope, after her father fixes her marriage with an old village head. The folk songs of Chhattisgarh are a part of the play throughout.

Charandas Chor

In 1975, Tanvir wrote and directed Charandas Chor, which won him an award at the Edinburgh festival in 1982. The play, an adaption of a classical Rajasthani folktale by Vijayadan Detha, is based on the life of a thief, Charan, and a foolish policemen.

Even though Charan is a habitual thief, he is a man of a strange sort of integrity, and the audience sympathises with him. In an attempt to outsmart the police, Charan enters a Guruji’s ashram and expresses his desire to become a disciple. The guru extracts four vows from him, and how he navigates life by trying to live by those vows forms his struggle.

source: http://www.theprint.in / ThePrint / Home> Features / by Bismee Taskin / June 08th, 2020