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From Classroom to Public Space: Creating a New Theatrical Public Sphere in Early Independent India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2018

MANJARI MUKHERJEE
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Abstract

Though India declared itself a sovereign nation only in 1947, after two hundred years of British rule, its people had unleashed the processes of ‘Indianization’ well before independence. While addressing the transition from colonial subjecthood to independent citizenship is intricately linked to efforts of decolonization, the role of English-medium education in the creation of a new emergent class of independent Indian citizens often gets overlooked. This essay analyses the immediate impact of independence (1947–50), and locates the educational spaces where Indians (predominantly elite Bengalis) were struggling to unlink citizenship from nationalism and exploring inter-community relationships such as those between the Bengali elite and the micro-minority Jews, Parsis, Armenians and Anglo-Indians. I show how theatre activities by the students of St Xavier's Collegiate School and College, their new roles as potential public intellectuals and citizens of post-independent India and their theatre constituted an important intervention in the new democratic processes. I examine the duality of a Bengali elite who acquired an English-medium education and performed English-style Shakespeare while trying to construct a political dramaturgy as an ensemble or collective.

Type
Essays: Pedagogies of Citizenship: Performance, Institutions and Gendering
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , October 2017 , pp. 327 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2018 

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References

NOTES

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9 Bandopadhyay, ‘Theatre’, p. 419.

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11 Dutt, Utpal, Towards A Revolutionary Theatre (Kolkata: Seagull Books, 2009), p. i.Google Scholar

12 Interview with Utpal Dutt, ‘Taking Shakespeare to the Common Man’, originally published in Oxygen News, Shakespeare Quatercentenary Supplement, 1964; reprinted in Epic Theatre (Calcutta), March 1999, p. 19.

13 Ibid.

14 Bekhor, Sol, ‘Happy Memories: Our Student Days. Birth of the Little Theatre’, Epic Theatre (Calcutta), March 1996, p. 50.Google Scholar

15 Interview of Utpal Dutt by Samik Bandopadhyay, 3–17 September 1989, Sudrak Collection, 10 (Autumn 1400 (Bengali year)), p. 125.

16 Lal, Ananda and Chaudhuri, Sukanta, eds., Shakespeare on the Calcutta Stage: A Checklist (Kolkata: Papyrus, 2001), p. 71.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., p. 71. In addition to Dutt as Brutus, the cast featured Ellis Abraham as Caesar, Protap Roy as Cassius, Jeffrey Isaac as Mark Antony, Ranjit Chatterji as Octavius, Richard Brooks as Casca, Philip Raymond as Decius Brutus and Haskell David as Cinna.

18 Lal and Chaudhuri, Shakespeare on the Calcutta Stage, pp. 71–2.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.

23 Solomon Bekhor, ‘Recalling Jewish Calcutta’, at www.jewishcalcutta.in/index.php/items/show/1217, accessed 10 January 2016.

24 Mukherjee, Sushil Kumar, The Story of The Calcutta Theatres (1753–1980) (Kolkata: K. P. Bagchi, 1982), p. 370.Google Scholar

25 Utpal Dutt, Towards A Revolutionary Theatre, p. 12.

26 Interview with Utpal Dutt, Epic Theatre (Calcutta), March 1996, pp. 47–53.