Mapping South Asia through Contemporary Theatre

Mapping South Asia Through Contemporary Theatre probes the overlap of theatre, society and politics in contemporary South Asia, approaching theatre primarily in politico-aesthetic terms and locating it in the simultaneity of local, national and regional discourse. While re-mapping the region by examining enduring historical and cultural connections, the study discusses multiple traditions and practices of theatre and performance in five South Asian countries within their specific political and socio-cultural contexts. South Asian theatre today means a whole range of performance genres and practices - appropriation of traditional forms in an urban, alternatively modern theatre; improvised and collectively devised performances on or off the proscenium stage; dramatic theatre in local languages or in English; translation/adaptation of foreign plays; and a whole host of community and applied theatre types. The book creates a complex framework of contemporary South Asian theatre with its affinities and disaffinities, continuities and discontinuities - a pattern that broadly hinges on its abiding as well as changing contours of reciprocal relationship with socio-political realities.