Asian Theatre Journal

Aparna Dharwadker’s edited volume, A Poetics of Modernity: Indian Theatre Theory, is a game-changing contribution for the field of Indian theatre studies. The volume brings together 76 primary texts covering over 160 years of material from nine different languages. Twenty-two of these are translated into English for the first time ever in this volume, and many others were extrapolated from difficult-to-access sources such as theatre programs, performance reviews, letters, diaries, interviews, conference presentations, and public addresses. Putting them together in this space both highlights the lack of a systematic theatre discourse in India and showcases the range and heterogeneity of approaches, practices, and ideas.

Dharwadker’s introduction does the Herculean work of contextualizing what could easily have been two volumes (one [End Page 597] 1852–1947 and one 1947–2014); hopefully, another is on the way to cover contributions from theatre professionals who became active in the 1980s or later. She has shown a great deal of restraint in her editorial choices and creativity in her organization in order to include the voices of as many practitioners as possible, both those that are very well-known (Rabindranath Tagore, Munshi Premchand, Mulk Raj Anand, Utpal Dutt, Girish Karnad, Rustom Bharucha, Badal Sircar) and some that are relatively obscure (Vishnushastri Chiplunkar, Binodini Dasi, V. K. Narayana Menon, Vijaya Mehta, Datta Bhagat, Amal Allana). She also expands the voices we usually hear by including those from outside the dominant discursive languages of Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, and Marathi. The early material is arranged chronologically by year of the author’s birth, but later material (from a time of more robust theoretical discourse) is organized in thematic clusters, making it easier to follow the exchanges that were happening. The author’s headnotes, glossary, list of abbreviations, endnotes for cross-referencing, and dual index (one for names and one for subjects) help avoid repetition while ensuring readers can find the information they need.

The idea of “modernity” holds the volume together and a good deal of the introduction defines this concept and explains how it is used. The concept is useful in that it is pan-Indian, includes colonial and postcolonial, commercial and amateur theatre while excluding classical Sanskrit theatre as well as religious, folk, or other traditional genres. Dharwadker argues that postmodernism never seriously emerged as an Indian theatre aesthetic but modernism did, taking a number of new trajectories within the theatrical sphere. Some of these include the formation of a secular and commercial urban theatre; the revival of classical Sanskrit theatre; the rise of print culture that enabled translation and adaptation; competition and collaboration with new media such as film, television, and video; and the widening of the canon to include diverse genders, classes, castes, sexualities, and languages.

While there has not been a singular systematic theatre theory in India, playwrights, directors, actors, and critics have long been making theoretical arguments about theatre in their writing and speeches. Prior to this volume, scholars have had limited access to most of these texts and therefore had an incomplete view of both the history of Indian theatre and how it fits into the world theatre scene. Most of the existing scholarship is either a homogenizing summary of a generic “Indian theatre” or focuses on single artists, languages, or regions; this volume celebrates the heterogeneity of theatrical writing and practice in India while offering a cohesive narrative.

Dharwadker’s introduction contextualizes the history, dividing it into four different periods (1790–1870; 1870–1930; 1940–1955; [End Page 598] 1955–present) marked by significant changes in the form and content of both drama and theatre. The distinction between drama (written) and theatre (performed) is important in the Indian discourse on multiple levels, including literary/intellectual (which favors drama and explains the large number of “closet dramas” that were exclusively literary), gender (it is seen as more respectable for women to write or direct than to perform on a...