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The urban theatre which emerged under Anglo-European and local influences in colonial metropolises such as Calcutta and Bombay around the mid-nineteenth century marked the beginning of the ‘modern period’ in Indian theatre, distinct from classical, postclassical, and more proximate precolonial traditions. A Poetics of Modernity offers a unique selection of original, theoretically significant writings on theatre by playwrights, directors, actors, designers, activists, and policy–makers, to explore the full range of discursive positions that make these urban practitioners ‘modern’. The source-texts represent nine languages, including English, and about one-third of them have been translated into English for the first time; the volume thus retrieves a multilingual archive that so far had remained scattered in print and manuscript sources around the country. A comprehensive introduction by Dharwadker argues for historically precise definitions of theatrical modernity, outlines some of its constitutive features, and connects it to the foundational theoretical principles of urban theatre practice in modern India.
Theatres of Independence is the first comprehensive study of drama, theatre, and urban performance in post-independence India. Combining theatre history with theoretical analysis and literary interpretation, Aparna Dharwadker examines the unprecedented conditions for writing and performance that the experience of new nationhood created in a dozen major Indian languages and offers detailed discussions of the major plays, playwrights, directors, dramatic genres, and theories of drama that have made the contemporary Indian stage a vital part of postcolonial and world theatre.The first part of Dharwadker's study deals with the new dramatic canon that emerged after 1950 and the variety of ways in...
"Representing the Past is required reading for any serious scholar of theatre and performance historiography: original in its conception, global in its reach, thought-provoking and transformative in its effects."---Gay Gibson Cima, author, Early American Women Crities: Performance, Religion, Race --
‘Rabindranath Tagore's Drama in the Perspective of Indian Theatre’ maps Tagore’s place in the Indian dramatic/performance traditions by examining unexplored critical perspectives on his drama such as his texts as performance texts; their exploration in multimedia; reflections of Indian culture in his plays; comparison with playwrights; theatrical links to his world of music and performance genres; his plays in the context of cross-cultural, intercultural theatre; the playwright as a poet-performer-composer and their interconnections and his drama on the Indian stage.
Since the late nineteenth century, theatre has played a significant role in shaping social and political awareness in India. It has served to raise concerns in post-Independence India as well. Modern Indian Theatre: A Reader brings together writings that speak to the historical contexts from which theatrical practices emerged-colonization, socio-cultural suppression and appropriation, intercultural transformations brought about by the impact of the colonial forces, and acute critical engagement with socio-political issues brought about by the hopes and failures of Independence. The volume addresses pertinent questions like how drama influences social change, the response of drama to the emergence and domination of mass media and the proliferation and influence of western media in India, and how mediations of gender, class, and caste influence drama, its language, forms, and aesthetics. The Introduction by Nandi Bhatia provides a comprehensive understanding of the interface between Indian theatre and 'modernity'.
Looks at the ideals of masculine Hinduism—and the corresponding feminine ideals—that have built the Indian nation, and explores their consequences.
Shaped by political concerns of today, this is an informed but provocative take on theatre history and theatre's social function.
After Independence, in 1947, in their efforts to create an 'Indian' theatre that was different from the Westernized, colonial theatre, Indian theatre practitioners began returning to their 'roots' in classical dance, religious ritual, martial arts, popular entertainment and aesthetic theory. The Theatre of Roots - as this movement was known - was the first conscious effort at creating a body of work for urban audiences combining modern European theatre with traditional Indian performance while maintaining its distinction from both. By addressing the politics of aesthetics and by challenging the visual practices, performer/spectator relationships, dramaturgical structures and aesthetic goals of colonial performance, the movement offered a strategy for reassessing colonial ideology and culture and for articulating and defining a newly emerging 'India'. Theatre of Roots presents an in-depth analysis of this movement: its innovations, theories, goals, accomplishments, problems and legacies.
The Necropolitical Theater: Race and Immigration on the Contemporary Spanish Stage demonstrates how theatrical production in Spain since the early 1990s has reflected national anxieties about immigration and race. Jeffrey K. Coleman argues that Spain has developed a “necropolitical theater” that casts the non-European immigrant as fictionalized enemy—one whose nonwhiteness is incompatible with Spanish national identity and therefore poses a threat to the very Europeanness of Spain. The fate of the immigrant in the necropolitical theater is death, either physical or metaphysical, which preserves the status quo and provides catharsis for the spectator faced with the notion of racial dive...
This book is the first volume of a collection of plays by Girish Karnard, most of which have been published before by OUP. This volume contains four plays, namely Tughlaq, Hayavadana, Bali: The Sacrifice and Naga-Mandala.