Event Details

Postdramatic Theatre in India Ashis Sengupta, Professor of English, University of North Bengal 19th May 4pm-5pm (UK)

The author of Postdramatic Theatre and India (Bloomsbury London, 2022) discusses how the book participates in the ongoing debate on Hans-Thies Lehmann’s theory of the postdramatic by placing contemporary Indian theatre within the conversation. The talk demonstrates how urban productions in India since the 1990s, which grew out of a complex of changing global and regional circumstances, have used theatre-making protocols that enter into dialogue with the postdramatic and reworked the paradigm in the process by enriching it with contemporized domestic performance cultures. Rich in formal diversity, theatre in India today includes devised shows, theatre solos, cross-media performance, theatre installations, scenographic theatre, theatre-as-event, reality theatre, and so on. Interspersed with this are Indian theatre-makers’ reflections on their own theory and practices vis-à-vis those in the rest of the world.

Ashis Sengupta is Professor of English at the University of North Bengal. A recipient of the Olive I. Reddick award (1995), Fulbright American Studies Institute fellowship (2002), Fulbright visiting scholarship (2006) and SASNET guest lecturer grant (2009), he has widely published on American and South Asian theatre in journals of international repute. His edited volumes include Mapping South Asia through Contemporary Theatre (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and Islam in Performance (Bloomsbury Methuen, 2017). Postdramatic Theatre and India (Bloomsbury Methuen, 2022) is Sengupta’s most recent publication. His areas of interest include literary and cultural theory, and theatre and performance studies.