The Colonial Public and the Parsi Stage

The Colonial Public and the Parsi Stage PDF Author: Rashna Darius Nicholson
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030658368
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
The Colonial Public and the Parsi Stage is the first comprehensive study of the Parsi theatre, colonial South and Southeast Asia’s most influential cultural phenomenon and the precursor of the Indian cinema industry. By providing extensive, unpublished information on its first actors, audiences, production methods, and plays, this book traces how the theatre—which was one of the first in the Indian subcontinent to adopt European stagecraft—transformed into a pan-Asian entertainment industry in the second half of the nineteenth century. Nicholson sheds light on the motivations that led to the development of the popular, commercial theatre movement in Asia through three areas of investigation: the vernacular public sphere, the emergence of competing visions of nationhood, and the narratological function that women served within a continually shifting socio-political order. The book will be of interest to scholars across several disciplines, including cultural history, gender studies, Victorian studies, the sociology of religion, colonialism, and theatre.

The Colonial Public and the Parsi Stage

The Colonial Public and the Parsi Stage PDF Author: Rashna Darius Nicholson
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030658368
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Colonial Public and the Parsi Stage is the first comprehensive study of the Parsi theatre, colonial South and Southeast Asia’s most influential cultural phenomenon and the precursor of the Indian cinema industry. By providing extensive, unpublished information on its first actors, audiences, production methods, and plays, this book traces how the theatre—which was one of the first in the Indian subcontinent to adopt European stagecraft—transformed into a pan-Asian entertainment industry in the second half of the nineteenth century. Nicholson sheds light on the motivations that led to the development of the popular, commercial theatre movement in Asia through three areas of investigation: the vernacular public sphere, the emergence of competing visions of nationhood, and the narratological function that women served within a continually shifting socio-political order. The book will be of interest to scholars across several disciplines, including cultural history, gender studies, Victorian studies, the sociology of religion, colonialism, and theatre.

The Parsi Theatre

The Parsi Theatre PDF Author: Somanātha Gupta
Publisher: Seagull Books Pvt Ltd
ISBN: 9788170462736
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
From its inception in 1853, Parsi theatre rapidly developed into a mobile, company-based entertainment that reached across colonial and princely India and extended overseas into Southeast Asia. Like its counterparts in modern Bengali and Marathi, it employed the prevailing local languages (Gujarati, Urdu and Hindi), used the European-style proscenium with richly painted backdrop curtains and trick stage effects, and depended on spectacle and melodrama to create audience appeal. Simultaneously, it ushered in the conventions and techniques of realism, marking the transition from stylized open-air presentations to a new urban drama. Although largely displaced by motion pictures after the advent of sound in the 1930s, Parsi theatre remains a vital component of the subcontinent s cultural heritage, significant for its long-term impact on diverse regional theatrical styles and the popular cinema. There is a great need for reliable information in English that would shed light on the history and practice of this important theatrical form. A vital source is a Hindi book that appeared in 1981, Somnath Gupt s Parsi Thiyetar, the best single reference for the early period of Parsi theatre history. It covers the antecedent phase of English theatre in eighteenth-century Bombay and extends through the end of the nineteenth century. Gupt consulted a range of source materials in several Indian languages as well as in English. The type of material is diverse, including advertisements, reviews and letters from English and Gujarati newspapers; early autobiographies and memoirs; and compendia of theatre lore published in Gujarati and Urdu. Through translation, editing and annotation, Kathryn Hansen has sought to make Gupt s Parsi Thiyetar one of the most frequently consulted studies of the seminal Parsi theatre form available to the general reader and the theatre specialist, thus making way for further research. Kathryn Hansen is a leading scholar of traditional performance of the Indian subcontinent. She is Director, Center for Asian Studies and Professor, Department of Asian Studies, University of Texas at Austin.

Stages of Life

Stages of Life PDF Author: Kathryn Hansen
Publisher: Anthem Press
ISBN: 1783080981
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
The vanished world of India’s late-colonial theatre provides the backdrop for the autobiographies in this book. The life-stories of a quartet of early Indian actors and poet-playwrights are here translated into English for the first time. These men were schooled not in the classroom but in large theatrical companies run by Parsi entrepreneurs. Their memoirs, replete with anecdote and humor, are as significant to the understanding of the nationalist era as the lives of political leaders or social reformers.

Diverse Pursuits

Diverse Pursuits PDF Author: Javed Malick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000412865
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
The five essays in this book reflect many years of the author's sustained academic engagement with dramatic forms and traditions. The opening essay traces the historical trajectory of modern drama in Europe from its bourgeois period through the period of the liberal dissent to the more recent periods of radical alternative. The subsequent essays deal with certain specific examples of that drama in India and the West, such as Shakespeare adaptations on the Parsi theatre stage, Habib Tanvir, and Samuel Beckett. The author places each of these in a historical perspective. This approach constitutes the theoretical underpinning of the book giving cohesion to this collection of diverse essays. Although they were individually published in various journals and books in their earlier versions, they have been substantially revived and updated by the author for this volume. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

The Oxford Companion to Indian Theatre

The Oxford Companion to Indian Theatre PDF Author: Ananda Lal
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description
This Encyclopedic Volume Is The First Of Its Kind In Any Language Covering All Of Indian Theatre. Lavishly Illustrated, With Some Rare Photographs From Archival Collections.

Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia

Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia PDF Author: Mitra Sharafi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107047978
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
This book explores the legal culture of the Parsis, or Zoroastrians, an ethnoreligious community unusually invested in the colonial legal system of British India and Burma. Rather than trying to maintain collective autonomy and integrity by avoiding interaction with the state, the Parsis sank deep into the colonial legal system itself. From the late eighteenth century until India's independence in 1947, they became heavy users of colonial law, acting as lawyers, judges, litigants, lobbyists, and legislators. They de-Anglicized the law that governed them and enshrined in law their own distinctive models of the family and community by two routes: frequent intra-group litigation often managed by Parsi legal professionals in the areas of marriage, inheritance, religious trusts, and libel, and the creation of legislation that would become Parsi personal law. Other South Asian communities also turned to law, but none seems to have done so earlier or in more pronounced ways than the Parsis.

Theatres of India

Theatres of India PDF Author: Ananda Lal
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
Theatres of India, edited by Professor Ananda Lal, is a comprehensive and accessible guide to theatre in India. The volume surveys both rural and urban modes of Indian theatre across its history of over 2000 years. The first section brings together entries that discuss theatres of India's linguistic regions. The second section includes entries on specific forms and genres, as well as on topics such as street theatre, music, and Tagore's dramatic oeuvre. The book avoids both the Western scholarship's obsession with traditional Asian forms of performance, as well as Indian city-based theatre workers' view that traditional forms do not even qualify as 'theatre'. 'Theatre' in this volume is defined as any form that contains theatre's fundamental element, acting. Importantly, the entries are accompanied by photographs of performances that allow us to view the 'visual-ness' of India's performance forms. In keeping with the highest standards of international reference publishing, Ananda Lal has compiled and edited material from several contributors so that each entry allows us to tap individual documentation and knowledge. Also included in this pioneering, authoritative, and collective resource are short bibliographies for every entry on the regional theatres. Theatres of India will be useful for general readers, theatre professionals, as well as students and researchers of theatre and performance studies.

Shakespeare and Indian Theatre

Shakespeare and Indian Theatre PDF Author: Vikram Singh Thakur
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 9389812658
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This book looks at adaptations, translations and performance of Shakespeare's productions in India from the mid-18th century, when British officers in India staged Shakespeare's plays along with other English playwrights for entertainment, through various Indian adaptations of his plays during the colonial period to post-Independence period. It studies Shakespeare in Bengali and Parsi theatre at length. Other theatre traditions, such as Marathi, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi, have been included. The book dwells on the fascinating story of the languages of India that have absorbed Shakespeare's work and have transformed the original educated Indian's Shakespeare into the popular Shakespeare practice of the 19th and 20th centuries, and the unique urban-folkish tradition in postcolonial India.

India's Literary History

India's Literary History PDF Author: Stuart H. Blackburn
Publisher: Orient Blackswan
ISBN: 9788178240565
Category : Indic literature
Languages : en
Pages : 540

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Book Description
Spanning A Range Of Topics-Print Culture And Oral Tales, Drama And Gender, Library Use And Publishing History, Theatre And Audiences, Detective Fiction And Low-Caste Novels-This Book Will Appeal To Historians, Cultural Theorists, Sociologists And All Interested In Understanding The Multiplicity Of India`S Cultural Traditions And Literary Histories.

Bollywood Shakespeares

Bollywood Shakespeares PDF Author: C. Dionne
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137375566
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Here, essays use the latest theories in postcolonialism, globalization, and post-nationalism to explore how world cinema and theater respond to Bollywood's representation of Shakespeare. In this collection, Shakespeare is both part of an elite Western tradition and a window into a vibrant post-national identity founded by a global consumer culture.