Ramon Magsaysay Awardee

Mitra, Sombhu

India India

1976
An Indian theater actor who created superbly crafted productions shaped the literary taste of an intellectual generation
  • In 1948, he organized a non-commercial dramatic troupe, Bohurupee, with 15 artists for whom the theater was not a livelihood but a dedication.
  • His adaptations of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and A Doll’s House, and his sensitive translation of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, made dramatically meaningful in Bengali their moral concern with truth and self-realization.
  • Bohurupee’s repertoire, also received with critical enthusiasm in Delhi, Bombay and Madras, includes modern comedies and social satires by MITRA and hitherto unknown Indian playwrights.
  • The RMAF Board of Trustees recognizes his creating a relevant theater movement in India by superb production, acting and writing.

Theater at its best is a most difficult and demanding art form. As mimed fable, the play laughs at fools and praises heroes while probing their emotional and ethical dilemmas amid the adventures of life. Yet the serious dramatist goes far beyond telling tales. He mirrors and illuminates the realities of his society. None are spared in this remorseless scrutiny. Ideological persuasions are seen as incomplete and often shallow. Candor of inquiry and presentation distinguish the genuine artist from the propagandist. And his actors portray the timelessness and universality of the essential human character that with its flaws, fallacies and fortitude must shape our destinies.

SOMBHU MITRA qualifies with gifted versatility as a complete man of such theater. A Bengali, he is heir to the rich cultural tradition that also produced Rabindranath Tagore. Joining the professional stage in 1939 when 24 years old, he quickly earned repute as a fine actor with notably eloquent voice and gesture, but quit three companies out of dissatisfaction with stereotyped dramas. In association with wartime anti-fascist writers and artists in 1943, his staging of a protest play won theatrical acclaim. This relationship ended in 1948 with his refusal to sacrifice art to doctrine. That same year he organized a non-commercial dramatic troupe, Bohurupee, with 15 artists for whom the theater was not a livelihood but a dedication.

Bohurupee’s initial years were marked by artistic integrity achieved through hard struggle. The troupe was shunned by commercial theaters, alarmed by the success of its startling departures from familiar sentimentality and melodrama, and accused of distortion by the political right and left. MITRA and his wife, Tripti?herself an accomplished actress, subsisted on tea and boiled vegetables until tided through each crisis by film roles. By preference, MITRA today receives income only as Head of the Drama Department of Rabindra Bharati University in Calcutta.

Overcoming meager costuming and sets with masterful acting and stagecraft, MITRA produced for Indian audiences some of the world’s great classics. His adaptations of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People and A Doll’s House, and his sensitive translation of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, made dramatically meaningful in Bengali their moral concern with truth and self-realization. His production of Raktakarabi (Red Oleanders), Tagore’s never-before staged poetic allegory of the spirit triumphing over materialism, was a cultural milestone. Portrayal of such philosophical implications with convincing reality in this and other powerful plays by Tagore has allowed Bengalis to discover themselves in drama. Bohurupee’s repertoire, also received with critical enthusiasm in Delhi, Bombay and Madras, includes modern comedies and social satires by MITRA and hitherto unknown Indian playwrights.

An exacting disciplinarian with himself and colleagues, MlTRA trains his troupe in voice culture, body movement and all other aspects of acting, and in stage organization, lighting and decor. His insistence upon minute examination of plays encourages reflection and interpretation. In 28 years Bohurupee’s artistic teamwork has fostered other lively drama groups throughout India, while MITRA has shaped the literary taste of an intellectual generation.

In electing SOMBHU MITRA to receive the 1976 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Creative Communication Arts, the Board of Trustees recognizes his creating a relevant theater movement in India by superb production, acting and writing.

Here tonight I rise, in humility and gratitude, to accept this honor on behalf of all those around the world who have joined the search for a meaningful theater. At the core of this search is man, in his relationship with society and with his own self. Only when this dual relationship finds its harmony does man achieve his completeness.

Man, perhaps, laid the foundations of society out of a sense of necessity. But it is in the nature of man that he is compulsively driven to overcome the dictates of mere convenience. In the early days of civilization, as he needed to draw water, he invented the urn. The urn was filled, but not his heart. So he began now to decorate it with color, geometric patterns, and his imagination. What an incomprehensible and strange craving!

Thus, too, in the sensual urge, he had to establish the innate presence of love. Thus again, the necessity of having to live together had to find expressions in relations that are sacred between the son and the mother, the brother and the sister. Why so? We do not know yet, nor can we fully perceive the nature of the intimate man who is in us. Nor can we fathom the depth where he resides. Who knows how far back he stretches out into our membrane of consciousness?

That is, perhaps, why we are threatened by inevitable disequilibria, a loss of sense of balance, as society is increasingly rigidly organized and shaken by the explosion of technology. Man finds himself unable to satisfy his creative and humane faculties within the limits of the organized society which he structures around himself. As the mechanism of creature comforts piles up, he is restless. He is alienated. And he is seized by hopeless greed and violence.

It is now clear that personal religion which prompts in us the finer sensibilities, the craving for love, the touch of affection and the persuasion of compassion, all spring from the valley of our ancient pastoral world. These sensibilities are daily eroded as we crowd ourselves in the dehumanized metropolises of the world. And yet, there is no road by which to return. This is today’s drama. The afflictions of today’s man and his tragic efforts to find his bearings with his social self are at the very center of the contemporary theater movement.

Every age throws up its own peculiar fundamental questions, and it must come up with an answer relevant to the times. A relevant theater is one that plunges into the deepest recesses of these issues, where man is ever seeking to come to peace with himself.

In this search of man for man, we are all partners, wherever we are and whatever we do. On behalf of all I pay my homage to the undying ideals of the late Ramon Magsaysay, in whose name we are gathered here tonight.