“...to break the barrier between the so-called great and little tradition, because I don’t see any compartments, I feel there is an interplay and a flow...”
With Habib Tanvir’s death on 7th June, 2009, a vibrant chapter of India’s
theatre history comes to a close. Habib’s beginning in theatre were with the Indian People’s Theatre Association - the IPTA - in Mumbai where he imbibed the vision of a
people’s theatre, growing out of the lived experience and culture of the dispossessed
and deprived. This is the vision that he nurtured to the very end of his life,
and explored from the 1970’s in his work with the Naya Theatre, company that he created with a highly skilled and talented body of folk artistes
from Chhattisgarh, never falling into the trap of celebrating or valorizing
folk exotica or naivete; and upholding the secular and rational values of India’s continually threatened democracy. A long interview which began in Delhi in
1995 and continued in Calcutta some months later with Habib Tanvir is offered
to theatre practitioners and enthusiasts all over the world.
