Browsing by Author "Prateek"

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Articulating Female Angst in Manipur: A Study of Mythical Surrender
(Taylor & Francis, 2017-12) Prateek
If the “unconstitutional” inclusion of Manipur in the Indian union in 1949 left the Manipuris in shock, then the implementation of the 1958 Indian Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act left them speechless and traumatized. In response a new type of Manipuri theatre emerged, which we call “neues theatre.” We examine the reasons for the rise of “neues theatre.” We locate the narrative of a recent Manipuri play Mythical Surrender (2011) in a social and cultural context, explain the ontogeny of Manipuri theatre, and present a gendered analysis to support our views on the impossibility of the unification of North India and the North East.
Articulating Mountains Through Mofussil Aesthetics
(Taylor & Francis, 2019-07) Prateek
This article investigates the crucial role of operatic theatre tradition in representing the mountain culture of Uttarakhand, a region that became the twenty-seventh state of the Republic of India in 2000. Uttarakhand culture is extremely diverse, so in this article I solely examine the performance practices of the Kumaoni community and, in particular, a Kumaoni opera called Rajula Malushahi, which is based on a folk mountain legend. This article problematizes and expands the range of influence of mountain cultures by drawing on a version of this story by Indian director Amit Saxena, performed on 17 January 2017, at the Sri Ram Centre for Performing Arts, Delhi. The first part of the article traces the emergence of the Kumaoni opera tradition and its ability to articulate the voice of these mountain people. In the second and third parts, I examine the dramaturgical practices of Rajula Malushahi and demonstrate how it diverged from mainstream Indian dramaturgies, and how this voiced the anxieties and dilemmas of peripheral mountain cultures. These strategic diversions reimagined the idea of mountains and the female gender. I argue that Kumaoni operatic theatre tradition, which is based on folk narratives, continually connects mountains, human bodies and modern environmental discourses, and thus offers a critique of entrenched modern divisions between humans and non-humans.
Aunties are voices from the sky: Re-imagining resistance in bollywood
(Taylor & Francis, 2022-06) Prateek
This article explores the poetics and politics of the Indian aunty. I argue that the aunty in the movie The Lunchbox (2013) negotiates with the ancient Sanskrit tradition of akashvani (celestial voice). In the first part of the article, I track the aunty’s trajectory from a loan word in Hindi to a political statement. I then study the aunty through an analysis of Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox to demonstrate how the aunty figure rewrites Bollywood’s eroticizing gaze and challenges unpaid female domestic labor. Overall, I examine how the Indian aunty offers another idiom of resistance against the discourse of patriarchy.
Brecht in India The Poetics and Politics of Transcultural Theatre
(Routledge, 2021) Prateek
Brecht in India analyses the dramaturgy and theatrical practices of the German playwright Bertolt Brecht in post-independence India. The book explores how post-independence Indian drama is an instance of a cultural palimpsest, a site celebrating a dialogue between Western and Indian theatrical traditions, rather than a homogenous and isolated canon. Analysing the dissemination of a selection of Brecht’s plays in the Hindi belt between the 1960s and the 1990s, this study demonstrates that Brecht’s work provided aesthetic and ideological paradigms to modern Hindi playwrights, helping them develop and stage a national identity. The book also traces how the reception of Brecht was mediated in India, how it helped post-independence Indian playwrights formulate a political theatre, and how the dissemination of Brechtian aesthetics in India addressed the anxiety related to the stasis in Brechtian theatre in Europe. Tracking the dialogue between Brechtian aesthetics in India and Europe and a history of deliberate cultural resistance, Brecht in India is an invaluable resource for academics and students of theatre studies and theatre historiography, as well as scholars of post-colonial history and literature.
Brecht in India The Poetics and Politics of Transcultural Theatre
(Routledge, 2022-05) Prateek
Brecht in India analyses the dramaturgy and theatrical practices of the German playwright Bertolt Brecht in post-independence India. The book explores how post-independence Indian drama is an instance of a cultural palimpsest, a site celebrating a dialogue between Western and Indian theatrical traditions, rather than a homogenous and isolated canon. Analysing the dissemination of a selection of Brecht’s plays in the Hindi belt between the 1960s and the 1990s, this study demonstrates that Brecht’s work provided aesthetic and ideological paradigms to modern Hindi playwrights, helping them develop and stage a national identity. The book also traces how the reception of Brecht was mediated in India, how it helped post-independence Indian playwrights formulate a political theatre, and how the dissemination of Brechtian aesthetics in India addressed the anxiety related to the stasis in Brechtian theatre in Europe. Tracking the dialogue between Brechtian aesthetics in India and Europe and a history of deliberate cultural resistance, Brecht in India is an invaluable resource for academics and students of theatre studies and theatre historiography, as well as scholars of post-colonial history and literature.
East Meets East: Recycling Brecht in India
(Boydell & Brewer, 2018) Prateek
Emergency’s children: satire in the hindi comics of Hawaldar Bahadur
(Taylor & Francis, 2022-02-15) Prateek
This article explores an unusual connection between the poetics of ancient Sanskrit drama and Hindi comics. This interconnection highlights how satire was used in Hindi comics after India’s twenty-one-month Emergency was declared from 1975 to 1977. I argue that Hawaldar Bahadur comics negotiate with the ancient Vidushaka tradition of Sanskrit drama to overcome the angst of the post-Emergency world. In the first part of the article, I analyse the function of Vidushaka, a humorous character considered to be the personification of laughter, by first looking into its earliest example, the Sanskrit satire play, Bhagavadajjukiyam (The Ascetic and the Courtesan). I then study the modern rendering of the Vidushaka tradition through an analysis of Habib Tanvir’s 1975 production of Charandas Chor (Charandas the Thief). In the second part of the article, I demonstrate how Hawaldar Bahadur of Manoj comics deploys the idiom of Vidushaka to create a new model of resistance, which in turn critiques the mainstream discourse of resistance – that is, of the ‘angry young man’ popularised by Bahadur of Indrajal comics. Overall, I examine satire in Hindi comics to understand how humorous characters have contested the discourse of an autocratic nation-state.
Hinglish Cinema
(Springer, 2014) Prateek
About September 1994, the character of Bollywood underwent a change with a deluge of movies such as Bomgay (1996), Bombay Boys (1998), Split Wide Open (1999), Everybody Says I Am Fine (2001), Leela (2002) and Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (2003). Myopically acknowledged only as a change in the linguistic character of Bollywood, as manifested in its portmanteau name ‘Hinglish’, this transfiguration was often considered lusterless and sans consequences, or another addition to the long list of names representing a blend of English and Hindi:
Hubble-Bubble of Transcultural Encounters: A Study of the Social Life of the Hookah.
(Journal of Media & Culture, 2017-02-17) Prateek
This article traces the cultural history of the hookah in Indian culture from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century, focusing on its imbrication in cultural practices and cultural narratives. In proximity with thing theory’s idea of the agency of “chance interruption” to disclose the “physicality of things” (Brown 4), I argue that chance interruptions of monetisation turned hookahs as “objects” into hookahs as “things.” In the first part of the article, I trace the origin of the hookah culture and then examine one such interruption of monetisation – the patronage system of the Nawabs – that made the hookahs’s thing status evident and recognisable. Moreover, in the first section, I further elaborate Bill Brown’s use of the term “chance interruption” and how it links to the “physicality” of the hookah in the wake of the Nawabi system. Interacting with the posthuman idea of how the material environment forms and transforms human beings, I explore the thingness of the hookah in the context of a “bazaar of thingness” (Appadurai 18) present in India. To underline this metamorphosis, in the first part of the paper, I demonstrate two things: a) an object becomes a thing through “a sequence of encapsulations” (Connor 18); that is, the production of a “thing” is directly associated with the production of a chain of significations connected to the thing itself, and b) thingness is not inherent in things but it is the effect “of recognitions and uses performed within frames of understanding (which may be markets or ad hoc negotiations of action or desire or bodily skills as much as they may be intellectual formatting or sedimented codes)” (Frow 285). To put it differently, an object evolves into a thing if it is humanly recognised. Broadly, I argue in the first section that transcultural encounters are responsible for “thingifying” hookahs. In the second part of the paper, I analyse the second interruption of monetisation, the mercantile system of the British. Furthermore, I contend that by employing the thing status of the hookah in his play, The Play of the Hookah Smoker: A Farce in Four Acts, Thakur Jagmohan Singh (1857–1899), an Indian playwright writing on the cusp of modernity, has created one of the first myths of Hindi nationalism. This myth feminises and demonises Bengalis, speakers of the Bengali language, so that Hindi can be extolled as the national language of the country
Inward Bound Self-referentiality in Bombay cinema
(Taylor & Francis, 2016) Prateek
Many lives of queer performance in India: a deliberation with Mahesh Dattani
(Taylor & Francis, 2021) Prateek
Mahesh Dattani took his first steps around the fire of Indian theatre in 1988 with the play Where There’s a Will. It became quite clear from the start that a new phase of Indian theatre had begun, with Indian-English as its lingua franca. This change was not only linguistic: Dattani’s thea- tre engaged with themes that were considered taboo, or too mature, for Indian audiences, and were thus often brushed under the carpet. Dattani’s celestial dance to amplify unheard voices from the margins of society – conjoined Siamese twins in Tara (1995), the third sex in Seven Steps Around the Fire (1998) – continued ever since, leaving the heteronormative Indian theatre reeling for breath. In 1998, Sahitya Akademi, India’s National Academy of Letters, recognized his con- tribution with the Sahitya Akademi award, making him the first playwright in English to receive the prestigious literary honor.19 In this article, which is presented in the form of a deliberation, I nudge Dattani to reflect on his theatre and to contem- plate what is queer about queer performance. I call it a deliberation rather than an interview because of the insightful and surreal quality of these reminis- cences. His reflections on queerness within the context of South Asia challenge the possibility of one absolute queer discourse. Overall, they show that the socio-linguistic conditions and theatrical traditions of India appropriate the universal con- struct of queer performance, adapting it for South Asia in general and to India in particular
Many Rammans in Uttarakhand: Jak and Bhumyal Renditions
(2024-03) Prateek
This essay is meant to serve as a compendium to my documentary, Many Rammans in Uttarakhand: Jak and Bhumyal Renditions, which can be accessed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISJ3Mnea0MU. The film highlights the diversity of the folk performance tradition of Ramman in the Indian hill state of Uttarakhand by analyzing two variants of the ritual, each dedicated to a village patron deity: one to Jak (alternatively known as Jakh) and the other to Bhumyal. Although the tradition is prevalent in many villages in the Garhwal district of Uttarakhand, the documentary focuses on the Ramman (dedicated to Jak) of Jaal Malla and Choumasa, two villages in the Rudraprayag district, and the Ramman (dedicated to Bhumyal) of Salud and Dungra, twin villages in the Chamoli district.
Naturalizing ‘Queerness’: A Study of Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy
(Rupkatha Journal, 2014) Prateek
If the representation of same-sex sexuality in punitive terms leaves gays in shock, then the legitimizing of Article XVI Section 377 (which bars gay sex) in India made gays all over the world, especially in South Asia speechless and traumatized. In response to this universally misconstrued image of an ‘unnatural’ man, Shyam Selvadurai, a Canadian-Sri Lankan writer creates a narrative which not only offers an ‘innocent peek’ into the biased perspectives of heterosexuals towards queers but the use of a child narrator is a deliberate ploy with which he deconstructs the craving for a so called ‘healthy’ text.’ Thus, this article, by musing on Selvadurai’s most acclaimed text Funny Boy (1994), attempts to examine how and why ‘unhealthy’ texts are constructed. Secondly, it elaborates on the subtle literary strategies used by Selvadurai to debunk pre-conceived notions of a heterosexual literary text. Finally, the article while locating a gay narrative in the social and cultural context of Sri Lanka, presents a gendered analysis of homosexuality in Sri Lanka.
The politics of dark ecologies in Deepan Sivaraman’s Peer Gynt
(Taylor & Francis, 2020-06) Prateek
This article analyses Deepan Sivaraman's 2012 production of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt (1876) and argues that the production's scenography evoked scepticism toward the Indian nation-state. This scepticism came as a direct consequence of the scenography's ability to alienate the audience through the formation of dark ecological environments, with the help of three characters: the elf princess, the son of the elf princess, and a hell hound, a concept invented by Sivaraman while adapting the verse play of the Norwegian playwright into Malayalam and English. The dark ecological aesthetics of the production functioned like Bertolt Brecht's Gestus and Verfremdungseffekt, offering a dialectical point to the audience to reterritorialize their understanding of the Indian nation-state and its ecology. In the first part of the article, I analyse the Indian dramatic form of bhana used by Sivaraman to articulate the discourse of what Timothy Morton calls ‘dark ecology,' and argue that the bhana's satirical narrative remained central to writings of Otherness. In the second part of the article, I demonstrate how the production mounted imbricated narratives of ecological awareness on the stage through the figures of the elf princess, her son, and a hell hound that relentlessly witnessed the capitalist journey of Peer. By offering an active agency to these figures through the scenography, Sivaraman's production interrogated the Indian nation-state's definition of ecology. Significantly, in its choice of a non-human witness, the production destabilized the human centre and pointed towards a post-human ecological turn. Although Ibsen's aesthetics have been used countless times in India to stage the anxieties of the female gender and minority communities, this was the first time they were employed in India to stage dark ecology; Sivaraman's production began where Ibsen's play ends. In the first scene itself, the audience members found themselves face to face with Peer's spirit - rather than the flesh and blood Peer of Ibsen’s play - begging God for another chance at life so that he could become a better man. When Peer is offered a second chance, he uncannily uses it to become a non-resident businessman involved in mining. The performance showed how scenography could be used to articulate a dark and depressing ecological awareness.
Reinterpreting passion: A study of Habib Tanvir's theatre
(Australasian Drama Studies., 2016-04) Prateek
This article examines the theatre of Habib Tanvir, a playwright, actor and director from India, and through this analysis demonstrates the emergence of the new definition of 'passion as resistence' in the 1970s in India. Although the idea of 'passion as resistance' arose during the colonial period as Indian writers assimilate this meaning. In his postcolonial theatre, Tanvir presented the viewpoint of the people against the established urban definition of acting that privileged the 'voice of the Artist' over the 'voice of the people' (to borrow the terminology from Rustom Bharucha), as well as the 'vachik abhinaya' (acting through speech) over the angik abhinaya (acting through bodily movements).
Towards a Definition of Performance During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Study of Ramlila in India
(University of Hawai'i Press, 2023) Prateek
This article demonstrates how Covid-19 transformed the performance aesthetics of ancient theatre traditions in India. I draw primarily on the October 17, 2020 performance of the Ramlila, the folk staging of Ramayana, produced by the Shri Ram Dharmik Leela Committee, Tri Nagar, one of the most popular theatre troupes in North Delhi. In the first part of the article, I explore the metatheatricality of the production by analyzing its camera-centric aesthetic while demonstrating how the performance divested gods of their power. In the second part, I investigate how the performance’s paratextual thematic bestowed power on humans. Broadly, I show that the Covid-era performance of Ramlila marks a break from some of the traditional conventions of performance aesthetics in India.
Whispers of hair: Untangling the narratives of Tenali and Bandhu in Sony SAB’s Tenali Rama
(Sage, 2025-02) Prateek
The folk stories of Tenali Rama (1480-1528), believed to be a courtier and poet in Vijayanagar king Krishna Deva Raya’s court, have inspired many adaptations in India. This study examines the Sony SAB adaptation Tenali Rama (2017-2020), arguing that by dovetailing Tenali’s voice with his shikha’s (the lock of hair named Bandhu), it highlights Hinduism’s tension between ascetic self-sacrifice and the pragmatic desires of a householder’s psyche. Working with the performance studies framework, the study investigates Tenali Rama’s garhasthya or householder identity. The first part draws on the critical investigation of David Shulman’s literary adaptation of Tenali Rama’s poetry to contend that the voices of Tenali and Bandhu in SAB’s adaptation are articulated through the dramatic devices of jester and vidhushaka. The second part engages with three scenes from the series to explain how Bandhu’s privileging of himself over Tenali’s ascetic quest provides a more complex version of Hinduism.