Sakharam Binder
Encyclopedia
Sakharam Binder is a play by Marathi
playwright Vijay Tendulkar
and was first performed in 1972. It was banned in India in 1974. It was produced and directed by Kamlakar Sarang.
He rules his home like a tin-pot tyrant, yet each woman is told that she is free to leave whenever she likes. He will even give her a sari, 50 rupees and a ticket to wherever she wants to go. Everything good and proper, where Sakharam Binder is concerned, he says. He's no husband to forget common decency. What he does not anticipate are the moral and emotional complications of this arrangement, which prove heartbreakingly ruinous to everyone involved.
Nilu Phule
, Sayaji Shinde
, Rajiv Nema have acted in this play as SAKHARAM.
Its most recent performance in English was staged Off-Broadway as a part of the theatre company The Play Company's season starring Adam Alexi-Malle
, Sarita Choudhury
, Anna George, Sanjiv Jhaveri, Bernard White and directed by Maria Mileaf. It was additionally included as the closing play at the month-long, Tendulkar Festival, held at New York, in 2004.
Naatak, a Northern California based theater group, will be staging "Sakharam Binder" in October 2010. They opened on October 10 to rave reviews.
Marathi people
The Marathi people or Maharashtrians are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, that inhabit the Maharashtra region and state of western India. Their language Marathi is part of the southern group of Indo-Aryan languages...
playwright Vijay Tendulkar
Vijay Tendulkar
Vijay Tendulkar was a leading Indian playwright, movie and television writer, literary essayist, political journalist, and social commentator primarily in Marāthi...
and was first performed in 1972. It was banned in India in 1974. It was produced and directed by Kamlakar Sarang.
Synopsis
Sakharam Binder, the protagonist, thinks he has the system by the tail and he can disregard the culture & societal values as long as he is truthful. That system is the de facto enslavement of women in postcolonial India, despite the promises of democracy and modernity. Sakharam, a bookbinder, picks up other men's discarded women—castoff wives who would otherwise be homeless, destitute or murdered with impunity—and takes them in as domestic servants and sex partners.He rules his home like a tin-pot tyrant, yet each woman is told that she is free to leave whenever she likes. He will even give her a sari, 50 rupees and a ticket to wherever she wants to go. Everything good and proper, where Sakharam Binder is concerned, he says. He's no husband to forget common decency. What he does not anticipate are the moral and emotional complications of this arrangement, which prove heartbreakingly ruinous to everyone involved.
Nilu Phule
Nilu Phule
Nilu Phule was an Indian actor known for his roles in the Marathi language movies and Marathi theatre. Nilu Phule had acted in around 250 Marathi and Hindi movies during his film career....
, Sayaji Shinde
Sayaji Shinde
Sayaji Shinde is a Marathi film and multilingual actor from India who has acted in Bollywood, Tollywood and Kollywood. He was born in a small village near Satara, Maharashtra.-Career:...
, Rajiv Nema have acted in this play as SAKHARAM.
Adaptation and Translations
The play has since been adapted and translated into many Indian languages, including Hindi, Bengali and English.Its most recent performance in English was staged Off-Broadway as a part of the theatre company The Play Company's season starring Adam Alexi-Malle
Adam Alexi-Malle
Adam Alexi-Malle is an Italian actor, singer, dancer and musician born in Siena, Italy. His Italian father and Spanish/Arab mother later emigrated to London in the United Kingdom and finally to the United States...
, Sarita Choudhury
Sarita Choudhury
Sarita Catherine Louise Choudhury is an English actress.-Biography:Choudhury was born in Blackheath, London, England, of half Bengali-Indian and half English descent. Her parents, Prabhas Chandra Choudhury, a scientist, and Julia Patricia Spring, married in 1964 in Lucea, Jamaica...
, Anna George, Sanjiv Jhaveri, Bernard White and directed by Maria Mileaf. It was additionally included as the closing play at the month-long, Tendulkar Festival, held at New York, in 2004.
Naatak, a Northern California based theater group, will be staging "Sakharam Binder" in October 2010. They opened on October 10 to rave reviews.
Further reading
- Five Plays, Vijay Tendulkar. (Various Translators), Bombay, Oxford University Press, 1992. ISBN 0195637364.
- Collected Plays in Translation: Kamala, Silence! the Court Is in Session, Sakharam Binder, the Vultures, Encounter in Umbugland, Ghashiram Kotwal, a Friend's Story, Kanyadaan. New Delhi, 2003, Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195662091.
- The Archetypal Identity of Laxmi in Sakharam Binder, Mohan R. Limaye, Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (1978), pp. 135-143
- Champa and Laxmi in Sakharam Binder
- Binderche Diwas, by Kamlakar Sarang, http://www.sahityabharati.com/up/Cart/Catlog.aspx?CatId=23&Page=1