ABSTRACT
Star-crossed love has always been a favourite topic with writers of all times. The international status of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as ill-fated lovers is a fait accompli. In contrast, what is not so well known is Utpal Dutt’s naturalization of the couple in three different ways in the theatre of independent India. This chapter discusses his productions of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Julieton the urban proscenium stage as well as in the folk theatre form of the jatra in the city and in villages.1 An interesting factor of Dutt’s engagement with Shakespeare is that, within his career as a great thespian, one can trace most of the phases that Shakespeare production in pre-Independence eastern India, in general, and Bengal, in particular, passed through. One may divide this history into four phases: (1) imperial hegemony, (2) mimicry, (3) translation and localization, and (4) adaptation and transformation. In Bengal the last two, however, were almost overlapping phases, and adaptations were by far the most popular. In many nineteenth-and early twentieth-century transcreations of Shakespeare, the source text became almost unrecognizable, and adaptations were more popular on stage. Utpal Dutt (1929-1993), one of the more remarkable actor-director-playwrights of modern India, in his artistic evolution between 1947 and 1970, transitioned through the second to the last phase with conscious ideological and theatrical convictions.
