Theatres of Independence: Drama, Theory, and Urban Performance in India since 1947, and: Poetics, Plays, and Performances: The Politics of Modern Indian Theatre (review)

Studies on modern Indian theater had hitherto been marked by a geographical, temporal, or genre specificity. But two powerful books that were recently published—Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker's Theatres of Independence: Drama, Theory, and Urban Performance in Indian since 1947 and Vasudha Dalmia's Poetics, Plays, and Performances: The Politics of Modern Indian Theatre—both redress these regional constructs by embracing the field in all its complexity and impressive expanse. Indeed while prior arguments have forwarded the notion that a comprehensive field of "Indian theater" was simply untenable theoretically, these two authors argue persuasively for a renewed modality of scholarship that seeks to place theatrical history alongside the narrative of the nation.

Dalmia and Dharwadker are insistent in their case for modernity in and of the Indian stage, a stance refreshingly distinct from many studies that simply focus on the (alleged) continuities of the classical traditions in the present age. These authors demonstrate the rise of Indian theater to be inextricably linked with the forces of nationalism of the mid-nineteenth century exemplified in the figure of Bharatendu Harishchandra. Such early theorists, while postulating a harkening back to the golden age of Vedic culture and Sanskrit drama, were in reality deeply imbricated in the modern phenomena of literacy, print cultures, and modalities of translation. Dalmia and Dharwadker present modern theater within the imaginary of India as coeval with the language politics of the newly emergent nation. Official discourse and cultural policy collide within these pages with playwrights and performers who continually interrogate, challenge, and transform the boundaries of the nation-state. What constitutes national theater and who has the right to make it are the underlying questions that propel both books. While Dharwadker's canvas is much larger, Dalmia uses the development of Hindi drama to chart much of the same territory. Both authors pay close attention to the processes of canon formation that within a few short decades since independence firmly embedded itself in the field of Indian theater. Here along with the plays that embrace a radically new aesthetic are also urban variants of the folk that have superseded the fascination with antiquity and Sanskrit drama.

Theatres of Independence is the most extensive and thorough analysis of modern Indian theater that exists today. With nine hefty appendixes that document the major play scripts and performances of the past fifty years, the book is an indispensable tool for any scholar of South Asian drama. But more than that, and this is where Dharwadker's biggest contribution lies, Theatres of Independence is a major intervention in the field of postcolonial studies as a whole. Contending that an attention to performance allows for possibilities that a text-centric field of postcolonial studies often ignores, Dharwadker conscientiously looks at the many examples in Indian theater practice that offer substantial challenges to the discourse of empire. Playwrights, directors, and actors through their work not just talk back to the colonizer's canon but also engage with a prehistory of the colony in critical ways. The resultant dialogue among practitioners, audiences, and readers offers very different dynamics of negotiating identity and tradition than conventional textual readings can accord. Dharwadker ultimately argues for an embodied history of the Indian stage rather than a purely enscripted one.

After establishing in the introduction the postcolonial frame that she employs for the whole book, Dharwadker divides her book into two sections—the first deals more with the lives, techniques, and theories of individual playwrights and directors, while the second deals with the recurrent themes of epic narrative, home, and history that can be distilled from the body of the plays themselves. Chapter 2 sets up three pivotal events in modern Indian theater history as the formation of the...