Subhendu Bhandari

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA under Productions will enable the development and creation of a series of theatrical productions in government schools and districts of West Bengal. Subhendu Bhandari will be the Coordinator for this project.

Subhendu Bhandari is a theatre practitioner based out of Howrah, West Bengal. After graduating from the Department of Drama, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, Subhendu formed a theatre group called Amta Parichay in his hometown Amta in Howrah with the vision of fostering the practice of theatre in rural areas of Bengal. With his formal training in theatre and having been part of various national and international workshops, Subhendu has directed over a dozen theatre performances for audiences across West Bengal, as well as in other parts of the country and abroad. Given his experience, he is best suited to be the Project Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA.

Subhendu’s training in Rabindra Bharati University acquainted him with the normative theatre spaces and practices in Kolkata, but he has strongly felt an urge to develop theatre practices in places where people have had no access to regular performance. He sought to devise a form of theatre that would be accessible, where audiences would feel connected to the stories and narratives that were being performed.  In order to address these, he took cues from his immediate surroundings in Amta. He noticed that most of the young boys would get into the zari industry in their villages after passing their secondary examinations, while most of the girls would get married early.  Also, a substantial number of children were dropping out of school, leaving them directionless and susceptible to abuse of various kinds. This prompted Subhendu to establish a theatre space through which a connection could be forged between them and the larger world through theatre.

For this Foundation Project, Subhendu and his group seek to expand on their existing framework of travelling theatres by employing research-based methodologies to build their narrative for a fictional story, tentatively titled The Happy Prince. The story revolves around two friends – a girl and a boy – and their teacher in school, and how their lives are upturned by a seemingly insignificant event. Conceived as a travelling performance, this production would explore the precarious relationship between social media, internet, and young adults and children. In order to develop the story and explore processes of theatre-making Subhendu seeks to closely engage with educators, child psychiatrists, economists as well as the teachers and headmasters of the local schools. This is key to his process of script development for the production. Once the script is finalised, Subhendu along with members of the theatre group will conduct workshops in schools, in order to involve the students and to forge a culture of theatre practice amongst them. 

As a theatre practitioner, Subhendu has always experimented with performance style, outside the mainstream proscenium theatre tradition. Some call this ‘intimate theatre,’ some call it ’space theatre.’ Subhendu however seeks not to adhere to any form but to experiment with his process, where the process is dictated by the requirements of his audience – who may not be initiated into the experience of watching a theatre performance.  For this reason, the final outcome for this project is a series of performances which will be performed in different spaces – be it a classroom at a school, someone’s courtyard, by a pond, a communal space, under a tree, on a temporary stage, even the dining space at someone’s home – with minimal props, across districts of West Bengal. As a practitioner, Subhendu seeks to create a new language by weaving motifs of traditional theatre into other forms of performance like mime, magic and puppetry and creating a new modality, in the hope of reaching young minds and people for whom theatre and stage usually remains inaccessible.

The outcome of the project will be a series of performances. The Project Coordinator’s deliverables to IFA along with the final reports will be a copy of the final script, photographs and video documentation of the rehearsals and the final performance. 

This project suitably addresses the broad framework of IFA's Arts Practice programme, and the Productions category in particular. Theatre practitioners and performance artists across have experimented with stylistic elements, processes and space which have contributed to the development of theatre. IFA hopes that this work will enable the development of a new language of performance working with space and new audiences, and invoke the sense of collective that lies at the heart of theatre.

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.

This project is made possible with support from Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund.