During the Rangashankara festival's forum on 'role of the critic in the arts', one kannada chauvinist type was riled that the discussion was being hijacked by criticism centred around English language theatre, till Sadanand Menon pointed out that modern 'criticism' as we know it only evolved after the forms of Yakshagana and other folk theatre that the gentleman was referring to.
So with this fascinating brand of theatre people: Safdar Hashmi, Habib Tanvir and Badal Sircar who are urbane intellectuals integrating the folk aesthetic into their work... well, do critics have a vocabulary for such a peculiar blend of the traditional with the modern?
It made me wonder, reading all the rave reviews of Badal Sircar's plays, if people in urban India (which is whose reaction the critics noted) were fascinated just because they had never seen anything like it before rather than truly evaluating the new form. I guess the question then is, what is more important to these directors: form or content??
