Theatrical Language Research Articles

Oregon Shakespeare Festival (review)

Reviewed by: Oregon Shakespeare Festival Sonja Arsham Kuftinec Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Ashland, Oregon. 8–1206 and 19–2108 2011. In one of twelve productions that played over the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s (OSF) 2011 season, The Language Archive, playwright Julia Cho evokes the shape of time. The dying fictional language of Elloway configures time as a “pool of water, big or small,” depending on experience (1.12). Cho’s theatrical language conjures time spatially, while designer Christopher Acebo’s backdrop of cardboard boxes, precariously stacked to the ceiling, suggested fraught attempts to catalog history. Theatre animates experience through temporal compression, fragmentation, and return—giving form to the ways we wrestle with the grain of memory, even as the past collapses into the performative present. OSF productions this season took up this exploration through familial and literary legacies ( August: Osage County; To Kill a Mockingbird), a moment exhumed from theatre history (The African Company Presents Richard III), and in historical plays that grappled with the vexed nature of political authority ( Julius Caesar; Measure for Measure). The season additionally offered imaginative takes on Shakespeare’s lesser hits ( Love’s Labors Lost; Henry IV Part 2), while rejuvenating Molière ( The Imaginary Invalid,adapted by Tracy Young and Oded Gross )and Gilbert and Sullivan ( The Pirates of Penzance). The festival also staged two world premieres: Ghost Light(conceived and developed by Jonathan Moscone and Tony Taccone) and the site-specific Willful(conceived by Michael Rohd and Shannon Scrofano). Often in conversation with one another, individual productions telescoped a host of temporal landscapes to speak to audiences in the here and now. A few interlaced threads dominated late-summer 2011: revolutionary upheavals in the Arab world, a burst of popular riots in England, and US presidential primaries infused with polarizing rhetoric around who or what constitutes “our country.” Although conceived prior to these events, two radically different yet equally vital productions of Shakespeare— Julius Caesarand Measure for Measure—offered insights into these happenings, and our place within them as a democratic populace. The conundrums that infuse political authority confronted audience members even before they entered the New Theatre to attend Caesar. Banners picturing assassinated leaders ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Che Guevara to Patrice Lumumba lined the outdoor walkway, theatre lobby, and staircase. Oppositional quotes scrawled on both sides of the banners (Lincoln is an “emancipator” and “tyrant”) complicated easy attempts to fix the rationale of assassination. Thus the audience was primed to confront anew Shakespeare’s tale, which famously comments on its own potential for continuous theatrical reproduction: “How many ages hence / Shall this our lofty scene be acted over / In states unborn and accents yet unknown!” (3.1). While banners marked the building’s exterior as a theatricalized space, inside the sparse arena stage actors engaged audience members in chatty conversation. With the houselights still on, Vilma Silva (who played Caesar as a woman) entered in fashionable business attire to invite our participatory assistance. When she raised her hands above her head we were to rise, applauding and chanting “Caesar!” She coached us into a fictional-yet-experiential frenzy—a rehearsal we thought—until the play suddenly commenced with us on our feet. The production thus doubly interpolated us into the story as witnesses and participants, as cogitating individuals and as a feeling mass. The resultant production was magnificent. Within a poor theatre aesthetic in which physically nimble, multi-cast actors sat with the audience when not onstage, we were continuously reminded of our own complicity, our own potential to be rebels or loyalists, active agents or passive populace. Fresh from viewing televised scenes in Cairo and London, we witnessed the seemingly unforeseen effects of [End Page 249]revolution replayed—of frenzied rebels with baseball bats beating the unarmed. Director Amanda Dehnert punctuated key moments with Brechtian effects: a chain dropped from the ceiling, while illuminating flashes exposed the theatre’s foundation and actors beat on metal lighting instruments. Together, these effects conjured the earthquake that shakes Rome. In Caesar’s dream, a white sheet of paper rolled out by Japanese-trained actor Ako (the Soothsayer) appeared as a canvas to be blotted with the red-painted handprints of...

German Literature and Culture under Revue: Learner Autonomy and Creativity through the Theme‐Based Theater Practicum

This article proposes a theatrically oriented, thematically structured course model for the upper level undergraduate German curriculum. The traditional focus on staging a single play in the German foreign language theater practicum neglects theater's potential to explore other literary genres and cultural texts and runs the danger of becoming an overly teacher‐centered endeavor. But a thematically organized theater practicum supplants the dramatic text as the sole unifying element and creates more space for students to determine the shape and content of the final performance. Based on experience with teaching three iterations of such a course, I introduce strategies from drama pedagogy and creative writing that can be used to explore literary and cultural texts and simultaneously generate material for a final, cabaret‐style production. Via specific examples, I consider how theater strategies can provide an engaging yet critical pathway into second‐language literature and culture and make a case for further experimentation with theater as both a medium and a method in German literature and culture courses.

The Provocation of the Senses in Contemporary Theatre (review)

Reviewed by: The Provocation of the Senses in Contemporary Theatre Deirdre O’Leary The Provocation of the Senses in Contemporary Theatre. By Stephen Di Benedetto. New York: Routledge, 2010. Cloth $110.00. xii, 238 pages. In the final chapter of his book, The Provocation of the Senses in Contemporary Theatre, author Stephen Di Benedetto admits that he has “little desire to sit through yet another national tour of Death of a Salesman” (167). Yet he concedes that he learned what good theatre was by attending such shows. Di Benedetto’s experience is not unique. As theatre scholars, we initially developed our critical apparatuses largely through years of study and attendance at “traditional” theatrical performances. While this does not make us unable to critically engage with performances that fall outside the conventional parameters and definitions of theatre, might there be ways that we can enhance and enrich our understanding of these events? For Di Benedetto, the answer lies in cognitive science and phenomenology. The Provocation of the Senses has as its central conceit that cognitive neuroscience can provide a new framework for better understanding theatrical expression. Di Benedetto maintains that being aware of how our senses are engaged in performance enriches our ability to interpret the form and function of the theatrical event. Additionally, theatre and performance artists can better understand how to use the sentient bodies of audience members, referred to as attendants throughout the book, to create more conscious involvement in the theatrical present. The book is divided into six chapters with an introduction, four chapters addressing the five senses (smell and taste are included in one chapter), and a conclusion that looks to future trends in performance and considers the implications of sentient performances. “Our Sensing Bodies,” the first chapter, is primarily concerned with explaining how the brain and body receive stimuli, and introduces the compelling argument that mimesis can stimulate the brain to remodel its neural pathways. Each of the “sense” chapters begins with a general, though detailed, summary of how each sense functions in relation to cognitive science and physiology, followed by descriptions of performances that engage each sense. “Scintillating Visions and Visual Perception,” the second chapter, examines the role of light and movement in attendant awareness. Di Benedetto asks how theatre artists and practitioners have consciously employed light to keep audiences stimulated and interested in what is happening on stage. Robert Wilson’s work is discussed in detail, with particular emphasis on his use of color as an expressive element. Di Benedetto concedes that while we will never see how the mixing of photons produces specific colors, to be more aware of how light affects our perception allows us to be more conscious interpreters of a theatrical event. Quite simply, we become more aware of the act of seeing. The third chapter, “Attendant to Touch,” considers performances where touch is directly employed to disrupt attendant awareness of the spatial distinctions [End Page 232] between performer and audience. Examples are drawn from Dionysus in 69, Karen Finley’s Return of the Chocolate Smeared Woman, and the work of Ulay and Marina Abramović, among others. However, the most vivid description is given to an amusement park Star Trek simulation experience. As touch is described as the most social of the senses, Di Benedetto argues that theatre performances that specifically challenge the attendant’s understanding of touch create new ways of learning about the world without risk. “Noses, Tongues, and Other Surprising Possibilities” looks at the ways in which smell and taste are used in order to connect the participant’s memory of lived experiences to the present theatrical moment. Di Benedetto is careful to note that efforts to incorporate smell into performance are hardly exclusive to contemporary theatre, and gives extensive descriptive space to the experiments of the Symbolists. His contemporary examples, however, are largely confined to film and television, with multiple examples of Scratch-and-Sniff and Smell-O-Vision projects in aroma technology. In “Aural Landscapes,” Di Benedetto focuses on the ways in which sound is used in performance, beyond the obvious use of language in theatre. He documents “how sound triggers visceral sensations, which in turn evoke mood in the context of performance” (125...

Teaching English as a Second Language: The Role of Noticing the Gap

The role of consciousness in learning has dominated current debate on second language learning. This is now the focal point of recent research by philosophers, psychologists, language theorists, linguists and especially language teachers who carry the burden of pedagogical consequences. The singular question is – how can successful language learning be achieved? In this paper, attempt at answer is made through the appraisal of the effect of consciousness, awareness or noticing on learning. It is argued that an effective way of learning is to raise the awareness of a learner on a language item to cause him to notice it and subsequently learn or internalize its use. A number of factors influence noticing but this paper focuses on the gap between the observed input and the learners typical output. The aim is to provide remedy to performance errors via positive feedback. In the paper, ‘learner’ is used to refer to every second language user but immediate attention is paid to the teacher at the intermediate level of education. The aim of the study is to enhance the communicative ability of the teacher by highlighting his performance errors, raising his awareness of them through the concept of noticing and subsequently providing him with positive feedback. Ultimately, the study hopes to invigorate the teacher towards self development and thus position him to effectively create linguistic appetite in other learners rather than linguistic apathy. The study used selected secondary school teachers in Maiduguri and Benin, as case study. The study submits that noticing, raising the consciousness of learners on what is right or wrong usage is a useful way to enhance the learning of English as a second language in our schools in Nigeria.

Breaking the Sound Barrier: Howie Seago and American Sign Language at Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Although we are accustomed to thinking of spoken language as essential for staged productions, in Language at Play in the Theatre Marvin Carlson describes a "heteroglossia of theatrical languages" that encourages a more diverse approach to live theatre. Among these languages is American Sign Language, which Howie Seago, a veteran of the National Theatre for the Deaf, employed brilliantly in two productions at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2010. Seago played Tubal in The Merchant of Venice and the Ghost in Hamlet , and teamed with Artistic Director Bill Rauch, who directed both plays; Dan Donohue as Hamlet; and Anthony Heald as Shylock to create memorable and precedent-setting heteroglossic theatre in 1.4 and 1.5 of Hamlet and 3.1 of Merchant . In these scenes the dialogues moved at expected theatrical pace because the two speaking/hearing actors had mastered not only their own lines but also the ASL signs for their lines and the ASL signs for the words of Seago's characters. Hence the assumed necessity for oral speaking, for articulate sound, as the singular medium for communicating Shakespeare's language was superseded. Not only had Seago's fellow actors learned ASL for both their own and Seago's characters words, but Seago was able to act out convincingly in gesture and physical movement the emotions inherent in Shakespeare's scripted words for his characters. The four parameters of ASL-hand configuration, movement, location, and orientation-enabled Seago to communicate the complex emotions of his characters via the dynamics of ASL's "visual language."

Reconsidering the role of practice in foreign language teaching and learning

Although the need for practice in taken for granted by many learners who view it as an integral part of foreign and second language learning, theorists and researchers are sharply divided on this issue. The proponents of the so-called zero grammar option, such as Krashen (1985), believe that language classrooms should replicate as much as possible the conditions of naturalistic discourse and there is hardly any place for practice. The proponents of focus on form, such as Long (1996), do recognize a contribution of pedagogical intervention, but it should be embedded in communicative activities and mainly take the form of corrective feedback, with the effect that the practice of specific language features is limited. Finally, the proponents of skill-learning theory, such as DeKeyser (1998), view practice as crucial since it is indispensable for the conversion of declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge. Given such conflicting opinions, the aim of the paper is to disambiguate some of the controversies and problems surrounding the place of practice in language learning, describe the forms it can take and single out such arrangements which are the most beneficial in the foreign language classroom with a special view to the language teaching context in Poland.

Of Flatterers and Fleas: Tristan L’Hermite's Le Parasite and Baroque Theater's Problem of Truth

This essay argues that Tristan L’Hermite's comedy, Le Parasite (1653–54), uses the figure of the parasite to reconceptualize a central tension of Baroque theater: the problematic relationship of appearances to reality, or what William Egginton has called its “problem of truth.” By putting the play's depiction of parasitism into dialogue with more recent explorations of the parasite by Michel Serres and Jacques Derrida, this reading aims to elucidate Tristan's highly original exploration of the nature of authority, the power of mediation, and the role of theatrical language in human relations.

“An Act of Bravery”: Queer Women's Performance in Contemporary Nova Scotia

This article examines the work of two contemporary Nova Scotia theatre artists, Mary Ellen MacLean and Lee-Anne Poole. The authors focus on how the work of both artists explores multiple notions of queerness through innovative theatrical languages. The article combines interviews with MacLean and Poole with analysis of key performances and situates their work within the context of queer performance in Nova Scotia.

John M. Fyler, Language and the Declining World in Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de MeunLanguage and the Declining World in Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de Meun. John M. Fyler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xii+306.

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Raising the Ante of Communication: Evidence for Enhanced Gesture Use in High Stakes Situations

Theorists of language have argued that co-speech hand gestures are an intentional part of social communication. The present study provides evidence for these claims by showing that speakers adjust their gesture use according to their perceived relevance to the audience. Participants were asked to read about items that were and were not useful in a wilderness survival scenario, under the pretense that they would then explain (on camera) what they learned to one of two different audiences. For one audience (a group of college students in a dormitory orientation activity), the stakes of successful communication were low; for the other audience (a group of students preparing for a rugged camping trip in the mountains), the stakes were high. In their explanations to the camera, participants in the high stakes condition produced three times as many representational gestures, and spent three times as much time gesturing, than participants in the low stakes condition. This study extends previous research by showing that the anticipated consequences of one’s communication—namely, the degree to which information may be useful to an intended recipient—influences speakers’ use of gesture.

TEATRO, CINEMA E INFLUÊNCIA EXPRESSIONISTA EM &lt;i&gt;LIMITE&lt;/i&gt; E &lt;i&gt;VESTIDO DE NOIVA&lt;/i&gt;

O teatro e o cinema, enquanto meios de expressão aparentemente semelhantes, encontraram na estética expressionista (no decorrer do século XX) maneiras muito eficientes de potencializar suas próprias formas de comunicar. Assim, as artes dramatúrgica, literária e cinematográfica brasileiras acabaram também encontrando meios de vincular suas identidades ao potencial delineador do expressionismo. O famoso dramaturgo Antunes Filho explora as ambiguidades formais e temáticas do texto Vestido de noiva, de Nelson Rodrigues, a partir de um avanço sobre a linguagem teatral com uma câmera de cinema. Nesse filme-peça, a ambiguidade característica do texto rodrigueano se expande para uma metalinguagem que, de maneira paradoxal, aproxima e distancia o teatro do cinema. Da mesma forma, o filme silencioso Limite, de Mário Peixoto, usa o dispositivo cinema para, ao mesmo tempo, recapitular e sublimar o conteúdo expressionista do qual é herdeiro, tornando essas obras da arte brasileira exemplos de como a relação entre a influência estética e uma constante tentativa de superação então no cerne da relação entre cinema e teatro, arte e vida, passado e presente.

Teatriuuenduse retseptsioonist sünkroonkriitikas. The Reception of Theatrical Renewal in Contemporary Criticism

The article focuses on the critical reception of innovative theatre productions in the 1960s and 1970s (directors Evald Hermaküla, Jaan Tooming, Kaarin Raid), in which the conflict of discourses in theatre theory becomes obvious and the metalanguage of criticism changes. Censorship made criticism difficult, because it forced the critics to use Marxist terminology in order to protect the productions from attacks based on Soviet ideology. Innovative theatre productions were seen as artistic experiments, but the results were appraised differently. Criticism was divided in regard to the following questions: the relation between the literary text and the means of expression on stage (primarily a question of staying true to the author), about the productions as such in their different meanings, and the actor’s relationship to the director. In the theatre world, the young directors’ renewal was most actively opposed by director Voldemar Panso, who dismissed it as a foreign and hostile direction in opposition to his own aesthetical programme. Kaarel Ird protected the young directors active at the Vanemuine Theatre (of which he was in charge) using Marxist rhetoric of somewhat demagogical character. Some critics, such as Valdeko Tobro, tried to place this new, modernistic type of theatre in familiar aesthetical and rhetorical categories using the aesthetics of Stanislavskian psychological realism. Psychological realism was treated as the tradition and mainstream of Estonian theatre, and any divergence from it was considered dangerous. The semi-underground journal Thespis (1972-1973) used the same metalanguage as the theatre directors. In Thespis, young intellectuals and critics discussed the relationship between theatre and reality, theatre as game and ritual as well as other questions, connecting with Artaud, Grotowski and Brook’s theatrical ideas. The reception of the production Külalised ( The Visitors, 1974) shows how the descriptive language used in criticism was approaching the ideas of the young directors, which were beginning to edge out the vocabulary of Marxist aesthetics. The discourse conflict was considerably mollified. However, the new language of theatre did not receive full recognition; the disputes about the changes of literary text and within which borders interpretation was allowed to operate continued. Another bone of contention was the perspective on the development of Estonian theatre – some critics awaited a synthesis based on psychological realism while others supported artistic pluralism.

The End of Rhetoric and the Residuum of Pain: Bodying Language in the Theatre of Howard Barker

The End of Rhetoric and the Residuum of Pain: Bodying Language in the Theatre of Howard Barker

Mácha w awangardowym teatrze E. F. Buriana

This essay is devoted to the Czech avant-garde stage-adapter from the 1930's and 1940's, Emil František Burian and his theatre D34 (also called “Dečko”). Burian adapted the output of the romantic poet, Karel Hynek Mácha, for the stage, using it to explore and express his conception of avant-garde theatre. In the words of Burian, Mácha was the “Czech Shakespeare”, far from any realism, so the meaning of his output, staged in the traditional, realistic theatre, was distorted. Trying to find the right way of staging Mácha, Burian finds his own idea of the new theatre, inspired by the conceptions of the Russian stageadapters Vakhtangov and Tairov. The most important categories in the Burian’s theatre were: motion, light and music. Burian was looking for a way to translate the language of unrealistic, romantic literature into the modern language of theatre. In cooperation with M. Kouřil and J. Lehovec he created what was known as Theatergraph, which began the era of “multimedia” performances. Burian’s modern conceptions of actor’s play also inspired others.

"Estranging Exteriority": translation and adaptation in Irish drama

This paper tests Nicholas Grene's theory that Irish drama is ...outerdirected, created as much to be viewed from outside as well as inside Ireland to see whether it holds true for Irish language theatre. Starting with three plays written first in Irish language: Brendan Behan's An Giall (The Hostage), Mairead Ni Ghrada's An Triail (The Trial: a Play) and Antoine O Flatharta's Grasta I Meiricea (Grace in America), paper will examine authors' English versions of plays to see whether they were literal translations, adaptations or transformation. If English version were adaptations or transformations, what kinds of artistic, cultural or linguistic choices did playwrights make to make the otherness of Ireland more accessible to their English readers and audiences?

Performing Violence: Literary and Theatrical Experiments of New Russian Drama (review)

Reviewed by: Performing Violence: Literary and Theatrical Experiments of New Russian Drama Vitaly Chernetsky Performing Violence: Literary and Theatrical Experiments of New Russian Drama. By Birgit Beumers and Mark Lipovetsky. Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2009; pp. 316. $25.00 paper. This volume is a comprehensive introduction to innovative Russian drama emerging over the past decade. The book is lucidly written yet makes bold and constructive use of a wide range of theoretical concepts, from anthropology to Lacanian psychoanalysis. To date, drama has been fairly marginalized within the study of Russian literature; thus this volume fills a very important lacuna. While the book's principal focus is on "New Drama" as a specific movement within Russian literature and theatre that emerged around 1999, Beumers and Lipovetsky also provide extensive historical and cultural context for this phenomenon. [End Page 478] Performing Violence opens with two prefatory essays, one by Kirill Serebrennikov, the theatre director most closely associated with the movement, and the other by Sasha Dugdale, the leading English translator of the plays by New Drama authors. The latter provides an eyewitness account of the birth of the movement, an unforeseen result of a series of seminars sponsored by the British Council in Moscow involving several writers, directors, and other members of London's Royal Court Theatre. These talks, and in particular the introduction of verbatim drama (documentary drama) spurred a surge of interest in the form among young Russian playwrights. Within a few years, what once seemed like tentative experiments of younger authors eager to break the dominance of plays by classic and foreign authors on the contemporary Russian stage coalesced into a heterogeneous though clearly identifiable movement. For the first time in many years, drama, rather than poetry or prose, appeared to be at the forefront of innovation within Russian literature. As Serebrennikov notes in his foreword, the principal accomplishment of New Drama is "the recording of a new linguistic reality"; it "forced the actor to speak the language of today" as heard on the streets of Russia (11). While the phenomenon of New Drama did not spread widely beyond the core group of playwrights and experimental theatre stages, this is the first school of playwriting in Russia to receive international recognition in our time, particularly in Britain, where many of these plays have been staged in recent years. A dominant feature of New Drama is its neo-naturalist aesthetic, with unprecedented prominence given to representations of violence. New Drama's main thematic preoccupation is the deep crisis of identity that has characterized post-Soviet society. New Drama playwrights' strategies of tackling this problem range from appeals to shared existential experiences and memories, to bold interrogations of the place of the Self vis-à-vis the Other and a return to the in-your-face performance characteristic of the 1920s Soviet avant-garde theatre. Although many of these playwrights reject what they believe to be the dominant features of postmodernism, especially in its consumerist incarnation, Beumers and Lipovetsky disagree, arguing that the hyper-naturalism of the Russian New Drama builds on the foundations of a wide range of postmodernist cultural strategies—and this is particularly pertinent to the carnival of cruelty observable in these plays, and in the eroticized charge manifested in them through such violence. In their theoretical model, Beumers and Lipovetsky emphasize the ritual aspects of play and the sacralization of theatrical language and space, linking New Drama experiments with the tradition begun by Chekhov and radicalized by Artaud and Genet. Russian New Drama does not seek to represent or reflect life, they assert; instead, it aspires to create a magic/ritual space of performative existence and a special type of communication with the audience. The ubiquitous violence in these works has several functions: first, it demonstrates the disintegration of Soviet social order and the ensuing chaos; second, it reflects a new social reality linked to the redistribution of both symbolic and economic capital; and finally, it points to the sacred by performing the ritual of transgression. Beumers and Lipovetsky deftly trace the place and logic of violence within Russian culture from the early post-revolutionary days to the years after the collapse of the USSR. In particular, they point...

The Art of Theatre in Nineteenth-Century America: George L. Fox, Pantomime and Artaud

This article argues that, through specific stagings orchestrated in the pantomimist’s art, George Lafayette Fox demonstrates a consciousness of staging and of theatricality that presages the blatant theatricalities of twentieth-century theatre and theatre theory. The Theatre and Its Double is essential to assessing theatre’s response to theatricality, specifically in its awareness of non-verbal strategies. My discussion of pantomime founds itself on a critical engagement with the concept of a total theatre, of gestures, physicality, movement and the performance of a theatrical ‘language’ beyond words. I argue that the theatrical language of Fox’s pantomime exhibits dramatic dimensions that appealed to the edgy rebellious urges of their audiences, the performances of the white-face clown articulating an awareness of cultural anxieties, responding to and participating in the formation of the social response to political agenda and debate. Pantomime, with its glory in excess, its incipient display of anti-establishmentarianism, its fluidity and emphasis on show, contributed to the development of American theatre as a dynamic form. Providing a concrete space with its ‘concrete language, intended for the senses and independent of speech,’ (Artaud, p.37), Fox’s gestural theatre can shed additional light on theoretical approaches to mime.

Language, Power, and Theatrical Language

Language, Power, and Theatrical Language

El retrato del doble: sobre los lenguajes del cine y el teatro

The languages of film and theatre share elements such as verbal, visual and narrative content as a consequence of the proximity of their purposes as artistic genres - both produce dramatized stories. However, they have distinct interests and put emphasis on different aspects of the setting, the events and the characters. The analysis of adaptations of plays into films provides an insight into the differences and similarities of both media which can be enriched through contrast. The first part of this essay contains a summary of the main theoretical implications of film adaptation of plays based on a review of the literature. The second part focuses on the study of two scenes of the film adaptations of Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf (E. Albee) and Closer (Patrick Marber). These two scenes illustrate the key points of the intersection between these two languages regarding dialogue and mise-enscene respectively.

Lineages of the Present: Mukul Kesavan’s Looking Through Glass and India’s Embattled Secularism

Mukul Kesavan’s Looking Through Glass (1995) is a remarkable piece of historiographical metafiction that imaginatively reconstructs the final years of India’s national movement. For this reason, it provides us with rich material to explore the relationship between the postcolonial narrative of the Indian nation and the anticolonial energies of the independence movement. But more importantly, as the present article argues, Kesavan’s novel locates in the national movement’s inability to resist the communal interpolation of its politics the genesis of contemporary India’s “embattled secularism,” particularly after the sudden rise into prominence in the 1980s and ‘90s of a right wing Hindu nationalist political party. How does this narrative deconstruct the ‘nationalist’ projections of this movement as a revolutionary spectacle? Why and how does this narrative seek to undermine the language of high theatre usually used in ‘nationalist’ accounts of this movement? These are some of the other questions which my article seeks to critically engage with.