Theatre through Globalisation

F1/105, Playwright: Ashutosh Potdar/Dir. Mohit Takalkar

Globalisation has been one of the most popular and discussed topics in recent times. As Jurgen Osterhammel and Niels P Peterson write in their book Globalisation: A Short History (Princeton University Press, 2005), Globalisation has fulfilled a legitimate need of giving us a name for the times in which we live. Globalisation means different things to different people and communities. It could mean economic liberation, a combination of local and global, movement from one place to the other or exchanging of ideas and working together. It could also mean a newer form of exploitation, hierarchies, identity-politics, and the homogenising diverse cultures. Although globalisation as a key concept and practice and its relationship with the different forms of human life has been established since the 1990s, it is an ancient historical process in the ways the universe has been interconnected and interdependent. The term globalisation first appeared in 1979 in an administrative document of the European Economic Community. As Nayan Chanda writes, “The frequency with which the term reappeared accelerated progressively over the late 1980, becoming increasingly more visible, like a comet approaching the earth. From mere two in 1981, the number of items mentioning globalisation had grown to 57,235 by 2001.” (246, Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers and Warriors Shaped Globalization, Nayan Chanda, Penguin 2007) Combined by mutually beneficial ways across boundaries, globalisation has shown the potential of changing the economic and political spheres of human as well as non-human lives. Moving beyond economic and political relationships, the interconnections also transform our cultural lives in diverse ways simultaneously.

Different cultural forms have been impacted by different forms of globalisation. Dramatic writings and performance practices are not exceptions. My current research is to understand and examine how play writing and performances practices have been impacted by the processes of globalisation since the 1990s. My interest is in investigating how the writers and artists active in the theatre scene in India find ways of taking forward their existing practices as well as exploring alternative possibilities and ways of being, thinking and doing through globalisation. My broad premise of work is staging practices in India and focus is on Marathi playwriting within the context of theatre making and presentation through the 1990s. In this, I am looking at how individuals and groups within this vast global universe are interconnected via theatre practices and the ways in which it has provided a platform for innovation and communication for theatre: playwrights, performers and audiences from different cultural backgrounds. Through mobility, interactions, modernisation and connectivity, theatrical practices have opened themselves to the newer as well as alternative possibilities for creating and presenting performances through collaborations and intercultural practices. As a playwright myself, I am also an active participant and witness to the changing context of society, culture and performance practices during globalisations. 

Through this section, I present my personal notes, observations on a selection of playwrights, directors, and performance spaces within the context of globalisation. Some of the questions are as follows:

• What are the thematic and stylistic explorations of the playwrights through the globalisation?

• How do playwrights and theatre practitioners experience ‘differences’ within globalisation at social and artistic levels? 

• How do they ‘make a life’ and engage in new theatre work through the creation, production and presentation?

• How do artists from different socio-economic backgrounds relate themselves with one another through everyday contact and interaction?

• How have deterritorialization and interconnectedness enabled writers and artists to extend their own practices of creation?

• How are the encounters reflected in local discourses, ranging from practices of everyday narratives and local and international theatre works?

• How does collaborative work create possibilities for building newer work processes and innovative forms of expression?

Key Themes: Mobility, Identity, Identity politics, Interdisciplinarity, Migration, Interconnectedness, Language, Power politics, Technology, Caste Politics, Gender Hierarchies, Collaboration, Village/City Dynamic, Agriculture, Outsourcing, Offshoring, Deterritorialization, Connectivity, Indianness, Nationalism.

Key Playwrights: Prashant Dalvi, Premanand Gajvi, Chetan Datar, Ajit Dalvi, Rajeev Naik, Sanjay Pawar, Jayant Pawar, Abhiram Bhadkamkar, Makarand Saathe, Cham Pra Deshpande, Shyam Manohar, Shafat Khan, Ashutosh Potdar, Sachin Kundkalkar, Himanshu Smart, Datta Patil, Arun Mirajkar, Manaswini Lata Ravindra, Irawati Karnik.