Postdramatic Theatre and India

None of the Indian theatre-makers consciously built their works on the Euro-American model of the postdramatic, but many have used the theatre model in innovative, transnational ways. Essentially, they have adapted an originally European theatre paradigm to a different historical context and added new dimensions to it by cross-pollinating it with indigenous cultural forms. The main aim in doing so has been to invigorate the language of Indian urban theatre that had turned stale under the stronghold of realism growing out of colonial stage practice and homogeneous under the decolonizing drive of the 'theatre of roots' movement post-independence. Theatre in India today is rich in cross-media performance, theatre solos and monologues, pure spatial experience, plurimedial work, durational reading, real-time action, and so on. The book balances theory, contextualisation and praxis, building a hitherto non-existing archive of scholarship in Indian theatre within a postdramatic framework, and an argument for its place within contemporary Indian theatre. Interspersed throughout are Indian theatre-makers' opinions about their contemporary performance theory and practices vis-a-vis those in Europe and the US.

Ashis Sengupta is Professor of English at the University of North Bengal. A recipient of the Olive I. Reddick award (1995), Fulbright American Studies Institute fellowship (2002), Fulbright visiting scholarship (2006) and SASNET guest lecturer grant (2009), he has widely published on American and South Asian theatre in journals and edited volumes that include Journal of American Studies, Comparative American Studies, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Indian Literature, and DLB: South Asian Writers in English. His edited volumes include Mapping South Asia through Contemporary Theatre (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and Islam in Performance (Bloomsbury Methuen, 2017). His areas of interest include literary and cultural theory, and theatre and performance studies.

Preface Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Hans-Thies Lehmann and Since: Postdramatic Theatre and Performance Today Contexts / Countertexts / The dramatic-postdramatic 'binary' / Passage towards the postdramatic / Presence / Mimesis, mediation, remediation / Postdramatic and the political / Return to the narrative and text / Performer-spectator relationship / Affect in postdramatic theatre / Postdramatic and the transnational 2. Theorizing and Contextualizing India's Postdramatic Adaptation as contribution / Theatre-makers of India: opinions and practice / India's 'postdramatic' / Occasions and contexts (Autonomous women's movement; Cold war, globalization, theatre practice; Cultural exchange, intercultural engagements, training, influences; Theatre festivals, pedagogy, entrepreneurship) / Theatre-making in India (1990-present): a summing-up. 3. The Postdramatic Turn in Indian Theatre Early adaptations / Early devised theatre 4. India's Postdramatic I 'Telling Stories across Forms' / Politics-as-Material / Theatre of Scenography 5. India's Postdramatic II Monologues and Theatre Solos 6. India's Postdramatic III Theatre of Speech / Theatre-as-Event / Reality Theatre / Theatre-as-Installation 7. New Directions Bibliography Index ViewRelated Title Changes