POLITICS OF THEATRE IN COLONIAL SOUTH ASIA

Historically, theatre has been used as a platform for promoting or denouncing political and social ideas. In colonized India, playwrights and actors utilized performance to express their discontent with English Rule. As anti-colonial themes became more pronounced despite the English’s censoring of these artists’ expression, further spurring their nationalist movements.

Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance-Theater and Politics in Colonial and Postcolonial India (Nandi Bhatia) “Blood Red Oleanders”- (1923) Tagore’s play about commercial exploitation, oppression, power, love, and obsession. Highly allegorical.

Jaishankar Prasad- “Chandragupta” (On Emperor Chandragupta Maruya I)

Parsi theatre group in 1853 performed Shakeaspearean plays- Shows westernization of Indian Theatre

Jaishankar Bhojak- “Othello” Played Desdemona, got famous for playing women-example of patriarchy and women’s exclusion from public life (1920s)

“Aag Garhi” “Iron Road” by C.C. Mehta

“Sarjanhar”- Ghandian Ideologies And untouchabilities

K.M. Munshi- Indian Independence movement from Guajarat. “Brahmacharyashram” (1931) “Dr.Madhurika(1936)”, “Paranik Natako”

“Dramatic Performances Act”- (1876)

“Theatre in Colonial India: Play-House of Power”- Lata Singh

Critical Analysis-not just description. Persuasive, Argumentative.

For literary, discuss formal techniques even in a predominantly content-based analysis

TOPIC SENTENCES

Discuss: Narrative POV, structure, title, themes, technique

Find scholarship from English POV and Indian POV

Contextualize the world around the plays being written, a cross-disciplinary approach

MLA FORMAT

(Not book reviews)

Ania loomba Shakespeare scholar, Shakespeare in India-look at her sources

One way that Indian colonial and post-colonial theatre reflected the social climate of the time was in the treatment of their female performers. Women were historically oppressed and violated, and actresses’

lives and the women they portrayed in performance perpetuated this mistreatment. (LATA SINGH – Women performers as subjects in popular theatres)