The Politics and Reception of Rabindranath Tagore's Drama: The Bard on the Stage

285 Pages·2014·1.64 MB·English

by  Arnab Bhattacharya, Mala Renganathan

The Politics and Reception of
Rabindranath Tagore’s Drama
The Bard on the Stage
This is the first volume to focus specifically on Asia’s first Nobel laureate
Rabindranath Tagore’s dramatic literature, visiting translations and adapta-
tions of Tagore’s drama, and cross-cultural encounters in his works. Tagore’s
highly original plays occupy a central position in the Indian theatrescape.
Tagore experimented with dance, music, dance drama, and plays, exploring
concepts of environment, education, gender and women, postcolonial encoun-
ters, romantic idealism, and universality. Tagore’s drama plays a generous host
to experimentations with new performance modes like the writing and staging
of an all-women play on stage for the first time, or the use of cross-cultural
styles such as Manipuri dance, the Thai craft in stage design, or the Baul sing-
ing styles. This book is an exciting re-exploration of Tagore’s plays, visiting
issues such as his contribution to Indian drama, drama and environment, femi-
nist readings, postcolonial engagements, cross-cultural encounters, drama as
performance, Tagore drama in the twenty-first century, and Indian film. The
volume serves as a wide-ranging and up-to-date resource on the criticism of
Tagore drama and will appeal to a range of theatre and performance scholars
as well as those interested in Indian theatre, literature, and film.
Arnab Bhattacharya is an internationally published critic, translator, and a
creative writer. His previous publications include Ghosts and Other Perils
(2013), an English translation of hilarious stories by the nineteenth-century
Bengali author Troilokyonath Mukhopadhyay and Writing the Body: Stud-
ies in the Self-images of Women in Indian English Poetry (2014), an edited
volume on the discourse of the body in Indian English poetry by women.
Mala Renganathan is Professor of English at North-Eastern Hill University,
Shillong (Meghalaya), India. She is the author of Understanding Maria Irene
Fornes’ Theatre (2011) and a contributor to Girish Karnad’s Plays: Perfor-
mance and Critical Perspectives (ed. Tutun Mukherjee, 2006), South Asian
Literature: An Encyclopedia (ed. Jaina C. Sangha, 2004), and Who’s Who in
Contemporary World Theatre (ed. Daniel Meyer Dinkgrafe, Routledge, 2000).
Routledge Advances in Theatre and Performance Studies
1 Science and the Stanislavsky 9 The Politics of American
Tradition of Acting Actor Training
Jonathan Pitches Edited by Ellen Margolis and
Lissa Tyler Renaud
2 Performance and Cognition
Theatre Studies and the 10 Performing Embodiment in
Cognitive Turn Samuel Beckett’s Drama
Edited by Bruce McConachie Anna McMullan
and F. Elizabeth Hart
11 The Provocation of the Senses
3 Theatre and Performance in in Contemporary Theatre
Digital Culture Stephen Di Benedetto
From Simulation to
Embeddedness 12 Ecology and Environment in
Matthew Causey European Drama
Downing Cless
4 The Politics of New
Media Theatre 13 Global Ibsen
Life®™ Performing Multiple
Gabriella Giannachi Modernities
Edited by Erika Fischer-
5 Ritual and Event Lichte, Barbara Gronau, and
Interdisciplinary Perspectives Christel Weiler
Edited by Mark Franko
14 The Theatre of the Bauhaus
6 Memory, Allegory, and The Modern and
Testimony in South Postmodern Stage of
American Theater Oskar Schlemmer
Upstaging Dictatorship Melissa Trimingham
Ana Elena Puga
15 Feminist Visions and Queer
7 Crossing Cultural Borders Futures in Postcolonial Drama
Through the Actor’s Work Community, Kinship, and
Foreign Bodies of Knowledge Citizenship
Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento Kanika Batra
8 Movement Training for the 16 Nineteenth-Century Theatre
Modern Actor and the Imperial Encounter
Mark Evans Marty Gould
17 The Theatre of Richard 27 Theatre Translation in
Maxwell and the New York Performance
City Players Edited by Silvia Bigliazzi, Peter
Sarah Gorman Kofler, and Paola Ambrosi
28 Translation and Adaptation in
18 Shakespeare, Theatre and Time
Theatre and Film
Matthew D. Wagner
Edited by Katja Krebs
19 Political and Protest Theatre
29 Grotowski, Women, and
after 9/11
Contemporary Performance
Patriotic Dissent
Meetings with Remarkable
Edited by Jenny Spencer
Women
Virginie Magnat
20 Religion, Theatre, and
Performance: Acts of Faith 30 Art, Visi8on, and Nineteenth-
Edited by Lance Gharavi Century Realist Drama
Acts of Seeing
21 Adapting Chekhov Amy Holzapfel
The Text and its Mutations
31 The Politics of Interweaving
Edited by J. Douglas Clayton &
Performance Cultures
Yana Meerzon
Beyond Postcolonialism
Edited by Erika Fischer-Lichte,
22 Performance and the Politics
Torsten Jost and Saskya Iris Jain
of Space
Theatre and Topology
32 Theatre and National Identity
Edited by Erika Fischer-Lichte
Re-Imagining Conceptions
and Benjamin Wihstutz
of Nation
Edited by Nadine Holdsworth
23 Music and Gender in English
Renaissance Drama 33 Nationalism and Youth in
Katrine K. Wong Theatre and Performance
Edited by Angela Sweigart-
24 The Unwritten Grotowski Gallagher and Victoria
Theory and Practice of Pettersen Lantz
the Encounter
Kris Salata 34 Performing Asian
Transnationalisms
25 Dramas of the Past on the Theatre, Identity and the
Twentieth-Century Stage Geographies of Performance
In History’s Wings Amanda Rogers
Alex Feldman
35 The Politics and Reception of
26 Performance, Identity and the Rabindranath Tagore’s Drama
Neo-Political Subject The Bard on the Stage
Edited by Matthew Causey and Edited by Arnab Bhattacharya
Fintan Walsh and Mala Renganathan
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The Politics and
Reception of Rabindranath
Tagore’s Drama
The Bard on the Stage
Edited by Arnab Bhattacharya and
Mala Renganathan
First published 2015
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The politics and reception of Rabindranath Tagore’s drama : the bard on the stage / edited
by Arnab Bhattacharya and Mala Renganathan.
pages cm. — (Routledge advances in theatre and performance studies ; 37)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Tagore, Rabindranath, 1861–1941—Dramatic works.
I. Bhattacharya, Arnab, editor. II. Renganathan, Mala, editor.
PK1727.D7P86 2014
891.4’424—dc23 2014032831
ISBN: 978-1-138-80462-3(hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-75286-0(ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
A birth centenary tribute to the memory of Shombhu Mitra
(1915–1997), the great thespian on the Bengal stage and the
legendary director of Tagore’s plays
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Contents
Introduction: The Drama of Rabindranath
Tagore (1861–1941) 1
ARNAB BHATTACHARYA AND MALA RENGANATHAN
PART I
The Politics of Rabindranath Tagore’s Drama
1 The Paradox of Knowledge and the Problem of
the Self: The Critique of Enlightenment Epistemology
in  Rabindranath Tagore’s Play The Ascetic 21
ARNAB BHATTACHARYA
2 Exploring Modernities in Rabindranath Tagore’s Plays 37
TUTUN MUKHERJEE
3 A World-Oriented Disposition: Rabindranath Tagore’s
Political Imaginary in the Play Raktakarabi (Red Oleanders) 51
SAYAN BHATTACHARYYA
4 Love in the Time of the Birth of a Celibate India: A Study
of Rabindranath Tagore’s Chirakumar Sabha
(An Association for Lifelong Celibates) 60
DIPANKAR ROY
5 The “King” in Rabindranath Tagore’s Drama:
Political Power Reinscribed in Raja (The King of
the Dark Chamber) 78
CHANDRAVA CHAKRAVARTY