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CFP The Performative Aesthetics of 21st Century Theatre in
India
Discussion published by Anita Singh on Thursday, May 4, 2017
Call For Papers and Play Scripts
“The Performative Aesthetics of 21st Century Theatre in India”
The ‘performative aesthetics’ of this anthology’s title draws on Erika Fischer-Lichte’s
“aesthetics of the performative”. In Fischer-Lichte’s reading “aesthetics of the performative” has a
“mediality” which collapses the divisions between producers, actors, characters and audience. Lichte
asserts, the “performative turn in the early 1960s, [...] not only made each art more performative but
also led to the creation of a new genre of art, so-called action and performance art”. The term
‘performance’ suggests a whole continuum of possible activities.
21st century Indian theatre undermines the schematic/generic boundary. The stage has
become fluid and dynamic. The point is theatre has become a ‘virtual space’ for dialogue between
different texts, contexts, cultures, and nationality and target readers with its new technological edge.
It is permeable and much a site for a spatiotemporal location of the new experience and expression.
Given the fact that it is an era of ‘globalization’ and ‘digitalization’ where all individuals are living a
wired life more (in)authentically than the life of flesh and blood, the position of Indian theatre and its
‘performative practices’ draws our critical attention.
This anthology, apart from offering the different trajectory Indian theatre traverses through,
poses some relevant questions to the existing body of scholarship on Indian theatre. For example,
how are we going to justify Indian traditional theatre in the global context? How ‘new spaces’
emerged out of our virtual relation with technology critically engage themselves with contemporary
reality (which is so palpable and bizarre)? What kinds of theatrical forms are available to represent
our ‘new’ cognitive experience and traumatized memory? Is theater reduced to a ‘virtual space’? Has
theatre incorporated all imagined and inconsequential experience in its present form? How
‘disruptive theatre’, if there is any, is craving for a niche to express [Anchor] itself with different
target audiences? In multilingual country such as India, how a language constitutes/refutes a
disciplinary form? These are among several interventions the anthology seeks to address in its textual
bound. Through this anthology we wish to venture towards newer ways to ascertain the possibilities
and parameters of defining the character of ‘Indian performance’ and its ‘aestheticism’. Furthermore,
the anthology intends to address the following:
The first is to explore the innovations in form, temporality and identity in play texts because the text,
be it performative or otherwise is not just “delivery systems" of "facts" but the product of political and
cultural activity designed and conceived by the ‘writer’ who is situated in a certain milieu and
location with inhibitions and cultural bags. Secondly, it critiques and historicizes the meanings and
Citation: Anita Singh. CFP The Performative Aesthetics of 21st Century Theatre in India. H-Asia. 05-04-2017. https://networks.hnet.org/node/22055/discussions/178493/cfp-performative-aesthetics-21st-century-theatre-india
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usage of “performance” and “performativity” in cultural theory framework. How do the new
ethnography, rituals practices, happenings, caste, ethnic and gender struggle come together and
overlap in the 21st century to generate contemporary notions of performance and performativity?
How drama and performance respond to global changes, or world -order after decolonization process,
labor migration, the shift toward a technology-saturated ‘society of the spectacle’? It further
highlights the political usage of performance after the ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’ (TO) as a form of
theatre used for community education. For example, Sanjoy Ganguly is doing an exemplary work in
Bengal. His group, Jan Sanskriti uses theatre to conscientize and empowers the communities it
serves. The anthology also studies how organizations such as Centre for Community Dialogue and
Change are dedicated to the promotion of Theatre of the Oppressed in education. This organization
works with students, teachers, teacher-trainers, senior citizens, children and healthcare
professionals; it also facilitates sessions on Medical Humanities, which in itself require our
engagements.
In its corpus this anthology is poised to explore how the Theatre for Community
Development by NGOs and independent groups (such as Alarippu, Sangwari, Jana Natya
Manch[JANAM], Cultural troupe of Stree Mukti Sanghatana, Samudaya Theatre Company, Budhan
Theatre, Asmita Theatre Group, Pierrot's Troupe, Nandikar, Little Theatre Group, Rangakarmee
[Anchor] among others) use theatre beyond entertainment as a participatory development
communication tool. Since the very beginning of the 20th century Western theatre artists have been
more and more influenced by non-Western concepts relating to philosophy or psychology in general
and theatre aesthetics in particular. This development has led to intentional attempts at ‘intercultural
theatre’ (advocated by Schechner, et al), which can be broadly grouped, into three categories:
1. Productions in which material from other cultures dominate, being regarded as models or ideals
(e.g., productions in the style of “Kathakali” or Noh theatre).
2. Productions in which the original culture dominates and foreign elements are used to enlarge the
range of expression in the theatre (e.g. Shakespeare adaptation/productions).
3. The third group of intercultural theatre aims at a universal language of the theatre (e.g. Peter
Brooks’ The Mahabharata)
Theatre practices have been followed, over the last couple of years by theoretical approaches to
intercultural theatre by Patrice Pavis, Richard Schechner, Grotowski, and Augusto Boal and in a
scathing critique by Rustom Bharucha. The anthology will also introduce the major Western
intercultural theatre artists of this century, and discuss their intercultural theatre practice in the
light of the theory and criticism. Also, it will study the different permutations of theatre of revival,
remounting of plays from the past; including postmodern quotations and productions that seek to
bring fresh life to previously written works.
These foci will converge. The plays selected for the study will speak to, and athwart, theoretical
texts by Victor Turner, Judith Butler, Bertolt Brecht, Michel de Certeau, Guy Debord, Antonin Artaud,
Richard Schechner, Gerzy Grotowski, Victor Turner, Augusto Boal, Eugenio Barba, Rustom Bharucha
and Suresh Awasthi among others. We will chart out the uncertain shift from modernist
Interiority/fragmentation to an aesthetics of gestures, behavior, and the “exoteric” .The anthology
Citation: Anita Singh. CFP The Performative Aesthetics of 21st Century Theatre in India. H-Asia. 05-04-2017. https://networks.hnet.org/node/22055/discussions/178493/cfp-performative-aesthetics-21st-century-theatre-india
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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also assesses the precarious overlay of ‘body’ and its ‘discourse’ in relation to new concepts of place,
space, and “the everyday.” We will spend time on what has emerged as a subgenre of plays dealing
with globalization, from the transnational sale of human organs to ecological devastation, from the
post-human to the post-truth imperatives.
The anthology broadens its corpus to incorporate critical articles and as well as ‘play scripts’
written and performed in the 21st century. It proposes to look at marked trends that characterize the
Indian performances that are more bodily-centered and presentational narration, rather than a
representational and ‘logocentric’ one. Some highlights are as follows:
Today's theatre in India (as elsewhere) is an open theatre, open and opening to voices unheard of or
muffled in the proscenium theatre of yesteryear;
A theatre by and about women now features women as leading, internationally acclaimed directors
and prize-winning playwrights, while feminist theatre ensembles have brought women forward as
agents of change, in dramas and society, by addressing the problems, misperceptions, and struggles
for justified recognition that have concerned women historically;
A theatre of class and caste diversity features most visibly. Artists have created some of the most
challenging, well-crafted, and artistically creative works of today's theatre;
Since the 1960s sexual inhibitions have become central topics of a number of plays and have emerged
as a defining issue for many theatre groups, festivals, and publications. These issues concern many of
the most celebrated plays of recent decades (such as the plays of Vijay Tendulkar, Mahesh Dattani,
Mahesh Elkunckwar and others)
Persons such as ‘differently-abled’ have not only found a new level of representation in plays and
theatre companies, but they have formed companies that create theatre for the hearing impaired or
feature a full company of blind or deaf performers;
Cross-gender and color-blind (non-traditional casting) casting has diversified the theatre in terms of
gender and ethnicity, while multiculturalism has extended to play selection as well as theatres
devoted to expanding the canon by supporting new works by ‘minority voices’;
Theatre has risked it’s take on in the realms of politics, language, and sexual relations, despite
external attempts at regulation and censorship;
Lastly, the anthology also attempts to look at the cultures of cinematic appropriation in the theatre
and performance aesthetics.
Guidelines for the Submission
The research papers and play scripts are invited for the publication on the above stated themes.
Paper should follow the MLA 7th edition.
Send the abstract of paper and as well as of ‘play script’ in about 300 words. The last date for
sending the abstract is 31 May 2017. You shall be informed latest by 18 June. The submission of the
full paper is due by 1 July 2017.
Images/illustrations, if any: copyright free images in JPEG format between 800-1024 pixels on the
Citation: Anita Singh. CFP The Performative Aesthetics of 21st Century Theatre in India. H-Asia. 05-04-2017. https://networks.hnet.org/node/22055/discussions/178493/cfp-performative-aesthetics-21st-century-theatre-india
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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longest side.
Word-limit: paper should be 3000 to 5000 words. However, there is no limit for the ‘play scripts’ as
such!
All the submissions should be made at: [email protected] or [email protected]
About the Editors:
Dr Anita Singh is Professor of English at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. She is co-coordinator at
the CWSD, BHU. She was a Fulbright-Nehru Visiting Fellow at the University of Virginia, USA. She
specializes in gender studies, performance studies, Indian theatre, American literatures, feminism
and critical theory. She has several books and more than 20 articles to her credit published in
national & international journals and anthology of repute. Her recent co-edited book on theatre is
Gender, Space and Resistance: Women and Theatre in India (DK Print) published in 2014. She can be
reached at [email protected]
Dr Shyam Babu teaches English in the Dept of Indian & World Literatures at the EFL University,
Hyderabad. He has published several papers that discuss identity, nation, gender, dalit and
performance. His PhD thesis on ‘Brechtian theory and Indian drama’ is under publication. He can be
reached at [email protected]
Contact Info:
Contact Email:
[email protected]
Citation: Anita Singh. CFP The Performative Aesthetics of 21st Century Theatre in India. H-Asia. 05-04-2017. https://networks.hnet.org/node/22055/discussions/178493/cfp-performative-aesthetics-21st-century-theatre-india
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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