Mapping South Asia through Contemporary Theatre: Essays on the Theatres of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka ed. by Ashis Sengupta (review)

Mapping South Asia through Contemporary Theatre is an important addition to South Asian and world theatre scholarship, with essays on the reciprocal relations between contemporary theatre and politics in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Given that South Asian theatre scholarship has been, as the editor Ashis Sengupta notes, dominated by Indian theatre and often preoccupied with the early post-independence period, this compilation of essays, with its regional spectrum and analysis of the 21st century, makes an exciting read. With an emphasis on political theatre—broadly understood by the contributors to mean agit-prop, street theatre, community theatre, and theatre for development—the book examines these practices within the cartographies of nation-building in the region from the mid-20th century to today.

The collection opens with a crisp foreword by Aparna Dharwadker, who notes the complexities of mapping the region’s theatres, which have been enmeshed in linguo-cultural, political, and religious conflicts, and yet share a long premodern history, the experience of colonialism (except in Nepal), and the challenges of postcolonial nationhood. What follows is a long (63-page) introduction by the editor, offering an informative survey of performance practices within specific socio-political contexts in each of the five countries, while also attempting to explore their interconnections, in what he describes as a remapping of the region (52). Sengupta describes “mainstream” (e.g., state-supported theatre) and “parallel” (e.g., indigenous and everyday performance) practices, drawing upon a rich range of South Asian theatre and performance scholarship, yet he also relies heavily on European and American literature and theatre scholars for his critical cartographies. These include Robert Weimann, Jan R. Veenstra, Frank Ankersmit, Sue-Ellen Case, Janelle Reinelt, Michael Kirby, Harry J. Elam, and James Thompson. Their interest in issues of performance versus theatre, presentation and representation, and efficacy mark the book’s territory of exploring an “engaged theatre” in South Asia. Syed Jamil Ahmed, in concluding his chapter on theatre in Bangladesh, questions his own focus on efficacious theatre, for its self-ennobling tendency and elisions of other dimensions of theatre and performance. In this regard, one misses from Sengupta’s introduction a deeper theoretical engagement with South Asian scholars whose inclusion may have further helped the reader to navigate the complexities of interrogating the reciprocal relations between theatre, performance, and “real life” within the region.

Shayoni Mitra offers a reading of the cultural decentralizations taking place in Indian theatre, contrasting the ideologies disseminated by the state-supported 1956 Drama Seminar, which sought to define and institute a singular notion of Indian theatre through its legacy in the “theatre of roots” movement, to diverse practices on the “fringe” in neoliberal India. She argues that works by independent practitioners, who are pushing boundaries of space, language, gender, and caste, challenge the hegemonies inscribed by the government in earlier post-independence theatre. Mitra describes the work of well-known practitioners, including Jana Natya Manch, Maya Rao, and Mahesh Dattani, but also of less familiar artists, such as Datta Bhagat who brings Dalit (“untouchables”) consciousness into Marathi theatre and who criticized the alienating tendencies of middle-class theatre as early as 1997.

Asma Mundrawala traces political theatre in Pakistan from early precedents, such as the playwright Ali Ahmed of the Leftist Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) tradition, to the activism that occurred during General Zia-ul Haq’s military dictatorship of the 1980s. She foregrounds the work of Ajoka and Tehrik-e-Niswan, socially conscious and political theatre groups with a commitment to women’s rights. She proceeds to explore changes that have occurred in the post-Zia period of neoliberal Pakistan, arguing that amidst an upsurge of non-government organizations (NGOs) and their short-term developmental agendas, theatre is transforming from a sociopolitical force into a commodity, a form of...