Theatre and Democracy

This collection of essays on democracy in performance is timely. It comes at a time when the very basis of the notion of democracy has been evacuated from its original premise onto the will of the individual by political systems and trans-national enterprises. With these essays, traces are made at the intersection of the global and the local, between modernity and tradition, of performance practices that are affected, troubled, or defined by the pull of competing political discourses. Performances of resistance against global forces, or other hegemonic regimes (in terms of gender, class, or race) are highlighted and analyzed. The contributions emerged from conferences organized by the Indian Society for Theatre Research, and its progenitor (in 2003), the International Federation for Theatre Research. For the local to envision the global is to seek out points of connection on a trans-national basis. The majority of these essays deal with Asian examples of performance. Contents include: Trans-National Theatre and Gender: The Implicit and the Explicit * Jatra and the Marginalization of Mythological Themes * From Staging Gender to "Rehearsing Sex": A Space of Freedom Among Theory and the Dead Meandering to Assist with Resistance * The Irony and Paradox of the Effects of Democratic Governance on the Development of Indic Theatre in South Africa * Characteristics of Korean Traditional Plays * Cultural Hybridity: A Study of the Christian Performance Tradition of Kerala * Performing History of Han in Korean Theatre: Park, Joh-Yeol's Play Toenails of General Oh * Democracy, Social Change and Theatre * Understanding and Misunderstanding Japanese Theatre * The Politics of Reading Folk Theatre Traditions * The Indian Women: Transformation into a Real Self * Performing Dalit: Echoing Multi-Layered Political Undertones in M. Mukundan's Oru Dalit Yuvtiyute Kadana Katha * Stage for Humankind: Contestation of Native Knowledge and Global Knowledge on the Malay Theatre Scene * The Politics of Working Class Racism: Sing Yer Heart Out for the Lads - By Roy Williams, Royal National Theatre, London * History in Performance: Cultural Activism in the Plays of Girish Karnad * Puppeting a Joruri: Is it Really Needed to be a Theatre?