Abstract

This article examines the contemporary revivalism of Marich Sangbad (1973), Chetana’s landmark production directed by Arun Mukhopadhyay, as a ‘worksite of the Left’ that continues to intervene in successive political conjunctures. Situating the performance analysis within the framework developed by Bishnupriya Dutt and Silvija Jestrovic, the article argues that the play’s minimalist Brechtian form – the secular Khel presided over by the Ustad-Sutradhar, three interwoven narratives of exclusion, and the indigenous song sequences – constitutes a perlocutionary political speech act in Tony Fisher’s sense: its political effects are aleatory, produced through interruption and formal fallibility rather than direct proclamation. Through close performance analysis of the Khel structure, the Meribaba sequence, and the CIA song, the article shows how Marich Sangbad anatomises colonial, feudal, and capitalist structures of oppression across historical periods and geographies, transforming Left nostalgia into an active reconstruction of collective memory. The article argues that the performance text’s in-built conjunctures – its three simultaneous narratives and aesthetic formation – allow it to avoid museumification and remain politically generative across successive crises, from the Vietnam War era to the proto-fascist consolidation of contemporary India.