Abstract
In 2017, Tanika Gupta’s Lions and Tigers premiered at London’s candle-lit, neo-Jacobean Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, which, at first glance, seems ill suited to house a play which is set in pre-Partition Bengal and which depicts both rioting mobs and machine gun shootings. This essay looks at the ways in which, contrary to such initial associations, text and performance space supplement each other. In this case, supposedly cosy candlelight and close proximity to the audience engender feelings of fear and anxiety that can be framed with Sara Ahmed’s notion of the ‘affective politics of fear.’ Continuously interwoven with negotiations between the leading figures of the Indian National Congress, Gupta’s play is firmly set in its own historical context. On the other hand, its climate of boiling nationalism and close parallels to jihad make it equally relevant to the present day. It is because of this contemporaneous historicity that Gupta’s play proves so gripping: through their ostensibly homely seventeenth-century staging, terror and political unrest become all too close to home, and so Lions and Tigers is as much a play that uncovers the hidden stories of Indian Partition as it speaks to the here and now.
About the author
is Assistant Professor of British literary and cultural studies at the University of Münster, Germany. Her areas of research and teaching include early modern as well as contemporary British drama, Victorian and neo-Victorian literature, and adaptation studies. Her first monograph, Shakespeare’s Suicides: Dead Bodies That Matter, was published by Routledge in 2018, and she is currently working on a second book project on configurations of empire in neo-Victorian fiction.
Works Cited
Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. 2nd Ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2014. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Bharucha, Rustom. Terror and Performance. London and New York: Routledge, 2014. Print.10.4324/9781315794488Search in Google Scholar
De Waal, Ariane. Theatre on Terror: Subject Positions in British Drama. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2017. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Dromgoole, Dominic. Interview. Sam Wanamaker Playhouse: Press Pack. Shakespeare’s Globe, 14 Jan. 2014: 10. Web. 4 Aug. 2018. <http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/uploads/files/2014/02/sam_wanamaker_playhouse_press_pack_january_2014_final.pdf>. Search in Google Scholar
Duggan, Patrick. “Unsettling the Audience: Affective ‘Dis-ease’ and the Politics of Fear and Anxiety in Contemporary Performance.” Key Words 15 (2017): 40–54. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Gardner, Lyn. “Anxiety is a death knell for theatre.” The Guardian 2 Mar. 2009. Web. 4 Aug. 2018. <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2009/mar/02/anxiety-theatre>. Search in Google Scholar
Gupta, Tanika. Lions and Tigers. London: Oberon Books, 2017. Print.10.5040/9781350207950.00000004Search in Google Scholar
Gurr, Andrew, and Farah Karim-Cooper. “Introduction.” Moving Shakespeare Indoors: Performance and Repertoire in the Jacobean Playhouse. Ed. Andrew Gurr and Farah Karim-Cooper. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014. 1–12. Print.10.1017/CBO9781139629195.001Search in Google Scholar
Hemming, Sarah. Review of Lions and Tigers, by Tanika Gupta. Directed by Pooja Ghai. Financial Times 30 Aug. 2017: Web. 14 May 2018. <https://www.ft.com/content/b50740a4-8d79-11e7-9084-d0c17942ba93>.Search in Google Scholar
Khan, Yasmin. The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 2017. Print.10.2307/j.ctv1bzfp93Search in Google Scholar
Kirwan, Peter. Review of Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare. Directed by Nicholas Hytner. University of Nottingham Blogs, The Bardathon 4 Mar. 2018. Web. 24 July 2018. <http://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/bardathon/2018/03/04/julius-caesar-bridge-theatre/>.Search in Google Scholar
Menzer, Paul. “In the Event of Fire.” Moving Shakespeare Indoors: Performance and Repertoire in the Jacobean Playhouse. Ed. Andrew Gurr and Farah Karim-Cooper. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014. 168–183. Print.10.1017/CBO9781139629195.012Search in Google Scholar
“Press Release: Shakespeare’s Globe announces the Festival of Independence.” Shakespeare’s Globe.com. Shakespeare’s Globe, 31 Mar. 2017. Web. 4 Aug. 2018. <http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/uploads/files/2017/03/31.03.17_final_festival_of_independence_release.pdf>.Search in Google Scholar
Schwander, Lisa. “Re-Visiting the British Empire: Neo-Victorian Perspectives on Multicultural Britain in Tanika Gupta’s The Empress (2013).” Finance, Terror, and Science on Stage: Current Concerns in 21st-Century British Drama. Ed. Kerstin Frank and Caroline Lusin. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto, 2017. 211–232. Print. Search in Google Scholar
Tan, Corrie. Review of Lions and Tigers, by Tanika Gupta. Directed by Pooja Ghai. The Guardian 30 Aug. 2017. Web. 14 May 2018. <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/aug/30/lions-and-tigers-review-sam-wanamaker-playhouse>.Search in Google Scholar
Taylor, Paul. Review of Lions and Tigers, by Tanika Gupta. Directed by Pooja Ghai. The Independent 30 Aug. 2017. Web. 3 Aug. 2018. <https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/lions-and-tigers-shubham-saraf-sam-wanamaker-playhouse-review-a7920581.html>.Search in Google Scholar
Tosh, Will. Playing Indoors: Staging Early Modern Drama in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. London: Arden Shakespeare, 2018. Print.Search in Google Scholar
Williams, Holly. Review of Lions and Tigers, by Tanika Gupta. Directed by Pooja Ghai. WhatsOnStage 30 Aug. 2017. Web. 15 May 2018. <https://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/reviews/lions-and-tigers-sam-wanamaker-playhouse_44490.html>.Search in Google Scholar
Woods, Penelope. “The Audience of the Indoor Theatre.” Moving Shakespeare Indoors: Performance and Repertoire in the Jacobean Playhouse. Ed. Andrew Gurr and Farah Karim-Cooper. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014. 152–167. Print.10.1017/CBO9781139629195.011Search in Google Scholar
© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston