Publication

Abstract : Gambhira, a folk theatre form of Maldah district of West Bengal is quite old and popular among the mass. The theatre has a prominent context as it is traditionally performed on the last day of the month of Chaitra in the pretext of Gajan, which is a folk festival associated with Shiva worshipping prevalent in West Bengal. The theatre form has its own distinctiveness as it has an episode of „local news reading‟ which is rarely found in any other theatre form of Bengal. The local news section enlightens the viewers about the current happening of the locality which mostly media and news channels take as trivial incidents. Another interesting fact about the theatre is its secular approach. Though the theatre is primarily performed in a festival associated with Hindu God but the Muslim community of Bengal also performs in it. The theatre has characters which are Hindu but when Muslim community presents it the character alters immediately. So, due to its social significance even in the present scenario it is gaining enormous popularity which eventually results into the drift of the theatre from its original context to the induced context. The paper tries to trace how a dynamic folk theatre like Gambhira loses its originality for being popular. Moreover, the paper had taken the aid of Richard Schechner‟s Performance Theory and Theory of Contextualism to study the text, context and settings of Gambhira in the changing scenario. Ultimately while studying the transformation of Gambhira, the paper will contribute to the existing literature on folkloresque and performance theory.