A Poetics of Modernity: Indian Theatre Theory, 1850 to the Present ed. by Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Poetics of Modernity: Indian Theatre Theory, 1850 to the Present ed. by Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker Taarini Mookherjee A POETICS OF MODERNITY: INDIAN THEATRE THEORY, 1850 TO THE PRESENT. Edited by Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018; pp. 632. A Poetics of Modernity: Indian Theatre Theory, 1850 to the Present undertakes a mammoth task: to provide a representative overview of the range of theoretical positions articulated by Indian theatre practitioners over the last two centuries. Comprising selections from ninety-three significant texts by seventy different authors written in ten modern Indian languages, this anthology marks the first attempt of its kind to put together a diverse array of texts that are both constitutive and representative of “Indian theatre as a modern, urban, secular institution” (xix). Through her detailed critical introduction and deliberate and meticulous collation of texts, Dharwadker makes the case for the relatively neglected field of Indian modern theatre theory as “an especially fertile site for descriptive and non-coercive constructions of Indianness” (xliii). A Poetics of Modernity thus posits a mutually transformative relationship between India and modernity as understood through the medium of theatre: the conditions of modernity are fundamental to contemporary constructions of Indianness, and the Indian context articulates a formation of modernity that is both intertwined with and distinct from Euro-modernity. In selecting, organizing, and editing the primary texts, Dharwadker employs a methodology that sets A Poetics of Modernity apart from existing approaches to Indian theatre in three ways. First, her anthology’s organizing principle is not limited to a single language or region; its parameters instead are the signifiers modern, urban, and secular. While Indian theatrical practice relies heavily upon translation and interregional conversations, academic criticism has remained relatively insular. This collection allows for a shift in that regard, opening up a space for comparisons and conversations across regional and linguistic boundaries. Second, A Poetics of Modernity sets itself apart from existing scholarly work on Indian theatre by including material primarily from those “who have practiced it with distinction”— a group of people ranging from playwrights, actors, and directors to dramaturgs, lighting designers, and translators (xliv). Unlike prior collections that consist primarily of academic criticism on modern [End Page 386] Indian theatre, A Poetics of Modernity foregrounds the contributions of theatre practitioners. Last, this collection is self-consciously not a descriptive and chronological history of Indian theatre; instead it highlights persistent, developing, and crucial strands in a tapestry of Indian theatre theory to demonstrate that this history is “a multilayered interplay of continuities and disjunctions” (xxxvii). For a scholar of Indian theatre, one of the most compelling elements of this collection is Dharwadker’s critical introduction, which lays out “a broad conceptual grid” for the dizzying array of primary texts that follow (xlvi). She organizes the dominant debates of modern Indian theatre, its principal attributes, and its contested identities into a series of overlapping “theoretical top[oi]” that have to varying degrees remained defining features of modern Indian theatre theory (xliv). For instance, the phenomenon of what Dharwadker terms “cultural recursiveness,” or the presence of the theatrical past in the present (xlvii), can be found in a range of theoretical positions in the anthology, from Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s nineteenth-century syncretic blend of Sanskrit sources with Shakespearean forms to Girish Karnad’s late twentieth-century meditations on the classical, folk, and colonial influences on contemporary Indian theatre (ibid.). This topos of cultural recursiveness allows for an exploration of the tension between tradition and modernity, past and present, in synchronic and diachronic terms. Dharwadker similarly distils other recurring debates into different theoretical topoi in the field. For instance, she parses the century-long questioning of the role and agency of authorship, along a spectrum from literary poet to popular entertainer, as a backdrop to the post-independence “instrumental condition of the literary-performative” playwright (lviii). She similarly delineates the diachronic and synchronic threads of another theoretical topos, one that grapples with the contested values of the key, and frequently contradictory, signifiers of modern Indian theatre: professional, amateur, and commercial. Dharwadker ends her introduction by signaling new movements and theoretical positions that have emerged to interrogate the establishment of modern...