Colonial Staged: Theatre in Colonial Calcutta

From the late eighteenth century, Calcutta, first city of the British Empire, has been a hub of intersecting ideas and movements of change. Nowhere did the restless currents of history play themselves our more graphically than in the composite art of theatre and performance. This pioneering study of the history of Bengali theatre looks at the plays mounted in the city in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and their reception. It goes on to study the cultural efflorescence known as the 'Bengal Renaissance' and the subsequent politicization of a theatre imbued with ideas of nationalism and social reform, with a particular focus on the complex and problematic issue of the place of women in theatre.

About the Author:
Sudipto Chatterjee is currently Assistant Professor of Drama at Tufts University. His fields of specialization include postcolonial performance, Indian and Asian performance theory and contemporary political performance. A director, performer and filmmaker, Chatterjee directed the West Coast premiere of Manjula Padmanabhan's Harvest at University of California, Berkeley