Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenor:
-
Rashna Nicholson
(Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)
- Location:
- Room 214
- Start time:
- 30 July, 2016 at
Time zone: Europe/Warsaw
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel attempts to delineate the challenging trajectories of early 'modern' South Asian theatres in the 19th century through an emphasis on its origins, development and expansion through the analysis of repertoire, touring companies, public spaces and audience reception.
Long Abstract:
In the mid nineteenth century, the advent of a burgeoning, educated, South Asian middle-class lead in turn to the creation of a modern indigenous public sphere. This included the emergence of local proscenium-based theatrical forms such as the Parsi and Marathi theatres where native English-educated students, exposed to touring Western theatrical troupes, began to perform translations and adaptations of Shakespeare and Restoration Drama. These theatres therefore constituted as part of larger ideological apparatuses for societal reformation through plays that depicted the evils of child marriages, polygamy and vices such as alcohol and gambling. With the increasing popularization and professionalization of local theatrical troupes and the commencement of touring, historical and mythological episodes were coupled with modern themes facilitating the invention of new modes of worship and forms of social critique. Increasingly mobile actors experienced complex relationships with the audiences that they sought to please, instigating, contributing to and at times appeasing class and communal anxieties. This panel seeks to delineate the conflictual trajectories in the origins, development, diffusion and expansion of early 19th century 'modern' South Asian theatrical institutions through an analysis of repertoire, touring companies and their members, public spaces and audience reception. Tentative panellists include Kedar Kulkarni (Max Planck Institute for Human Development), Sonal Acharya (University of California Berkeley) and Rashna D. Nicholson (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich).
Accepted papers:
Session 1Sarvani Gooptu (Calcutta Girls' College)
Paper short abstract:
The entry of the actress in public theatre of Calcutta from 1874 was a landmark event for all women in India. But did this employment bring empowerment to these bold young girls who came from economically backward families and a new identity? or was the lure of security and family life too strong?
Paper long abstract:
After prolonged debate among the pioneers of Bengali theatre throughout the late 19th century, the public theatres of Calcutta decided to allow women to act in female roles from 1874 and that brought a new vigour and professionalism into Bengali theatre. My aim in this paper is to trace how much the actresses were successful in creating a niche for themselves in the world of theatre. They had to face and overcome seemingly insurmountable difficulties in achieving success in the roles they were assigned in the plays but they did succeed. They achieved great fame and adulation. But the stigma that association with theatres had in the Bengali society tainted these women despite all their efforts. I would like to explore whether these performers were successful in unique ways in establishing an identity of their own while fighting for survival against all odds and discrimination in the period 1875-1930. The ideas that emerge may also echo similar experiences of first performers in other countries and other cultures as well.
Kedar Kulkarni (Max Planck Inst. for Human Development)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the multiple versions of the Arjuna-Subhadra courtship that circulated and contributed to discourses about love and marriage in the late nineteenth century.
Paper long abstract:
Beginning with the premise that the epics are not texts per se, but entire literatures, this paper examines the multiple registers of the Arjuna-Subhadra story in circulation during the 19th century. This story was fundamental to the way companionate marriage was framed in the last two decades of the 19th century, especially after it was staged as a five-act comedy, replete with over 100 musical numbers in 1883. At the same time, its sources were not epic, at least not directly. They appear in many epic poems, ballads, and even one dramatic monologue in which Subhadra narrates her own betrothal and lack of fraternal support. These many texts—performed epic poetry as well as drama—complimented the discourse in newspapers and journals of the 1880s to round out the popular understanding of the issue of companionate marriage.
Far from the dry, mundane, and vacuous platitudes of reform in print media, the multiple inter-related textual field of performance was significant for at least one important reason: even though there were relatively few social institutions where men and women could interact in order for "companionate" marriage to become a reality, the plays themselves were instrumental in bringing about new emotional horizons, and existed in tandem with print media. My paper seeks to understand the place of drama and performance in communicating ideas to a broad, popular public; companionate marriage is the focus, but the general argument will be relevant for other topics as well.
Rashna Nicholson (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich)
Paper short abstract:
This paper delineates the origins of the Parsi Theatre by tracing its concurrent growth with Parsi printing presses. Political contestation between orthodox and reformist factions highlight the conflicting ways in which mythological episodes were used for the invention of both religion and culture.
Paper long abstract:
This paper delineates the origins of the Parsi Theatre in Bombay in 1853 as part of a larger agenda forwarded by the Parsi reformists of Western India. It traces the concurrent growth of Parsi printing presses and the theatrical public sphere and the political contestation that took place between the Parsi orthodox and reformist factions within these two realms. The paper thus highlights the conflicting ways in which historical and mythological episodes were used for the invention of new modes of religious worship and culture in the long nineteenth century.
Shraddha Kumbhojkar (Savitribai Phule Pune University)
Paper short abstract:
Using Marathi plays written in the 1890s, the paper attempts to understand how the perceptions of modernity available for public consumption shaped up the contemporary public discourse about colonialism, modernity and tradition.
Paper long abstract:
The paper hopes
1. To review the manifestations of the concept of modernity in Popular plays in Maharashtra in the late nineteenth century
2. To investigate the "remedies" suggested for making or unmaking of Modernity
3. To identify the perceptions about essential and peripheral aspects of Modernity in Popular Culture
4. To compare the various Utopian visions of a Modern Society in contemporary Culture
5. To evaluate if and how the perceptions of modernity available for public consumption shaped up the contemporary public discourse about colonialism, modernity and tradition.
A number of manifestations of the concept of modernity in Popular Culture in Maharashtra in the late nineteenth century are emerging from this study. The texts under study have suggested some "remedies" for making or unmaking of Modernity as they have understood it. It is evident that different authors have different perceptions about essential and peripheral aspects of Modernity. Various Utopian visions of a Modern Society in contemporary Popular Culture are being compared. The data so far gathered seem to be confirming the hypothesis that perceptions of modernity available for public consumption shaped up the contemporary public discourse about colonialism, modernity and tradition.
Mahua Sarkar (Jadavpur University) Subhasis Biswas (Jadavpur University)
Paper short abstract:
The paper shows how theatre in colonial Bengal emerged as the gentleman’s cultural alternative with strong western influences and critically reviews the subsequent changes in it,ultimately rejecting coloniality and creating a public space of its own.
Paper long abstract:
Theatre is not merely a part of literature but a multiple art using words, scenic efforts, music, the gestures of the actors and the organizing talents of a producer.From this context, Bengali theatre had played its distinctive role as a worthwhile aesthetic experience in the nineteenth century. The society of Bengal was swept off its traditional moorings by the storm of western cultural aggression. The western educated gentleman or bhadralok's cultural alternative to the folk forms was the modern theatre , with new Victorian values and modes of expressions.The present paper analyses the prevailing standards of this cultural production and critically reviews the subsequent stages through which these standards had been transformed. The subsumed domination of a colonial ideology went hand in hand with this transformation of cultural production. Performing art as an expression of the social agenda of the gentlemen received the support of the colonial masters while political issues were rejected and gagged by laws like the Dramatic Performances Act of 1876. Gradually, the rise of nationalist identity infused into Bengali theatre a spirit of nostalgia and traditional historicality, which began to reject colonial influences, As the earlier appreciation of the colonial masters was no more, the stage had to concentrate once more in stereotyped social issues and historical romances, containing a subtle and hidden demand for freedom. By this time Bengali theatre had become a successful commercial and proliferating business of the region.