Kathryn Hansen

Stages of Life (eBook, PDF)

Indian Theatre Autobiographies

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

By the end of the nineteenth century, Western-style playhouses were found in every Indian city. Professional drama troupes held crowds spellbound with their spectacular productions. From this colorful world of entertainment come the autobiographies in this book. The life-stories of a quartet of early Indian actors and poet-playwrights are here translated into English for the first time.

The most famous, Jayshankar Sundari, was a female impersonator of the highest order. Fida Husain Narsi also played women's parts, until gaining great fame for his role as a Hindu saint. Two others, Narayan Prasad Betab and Radheshyam Kathavachak, wrote landmark dramas that ushered in the mythological genre, intertwining politics and religion with popular performance.

These men were schooled not in the classroom but in large theatrical companies run by Parsi entrepreneurs. Their memoirs, replete with anecdote and humor, offer an unparalleled window onto a vanished world, where India's late-colonial vernacular culture and early cinema history come alive. From another perspective, these narratives are as significant to the understanding of the nationalist era as the lives of political leaders or social reformers.

This book includes four substantive chapters on the history of the Parsi theatre, debates over autobiography in the Indian context, strategies for reading autobiography in general, and responses to these specific texts. The apparatus, based on the translator's extensive research, includes notes on personages, performances, texts, vernacular usage, and cultural institutions.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Anthem Press
• Seitenzahl: 392
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Dezember 2013
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781783080984
• Artikelnr.: 44758058

Autorenporträt

Kathryn Hansen

Inhaltsangabe

List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part 1
Chapter 1. Pioneers to Professionals: A Retrospective of the Parsi Theatre
Chapter 2. Theatrical Memoirs and the Archives of Autobiography
Part 2
Chapter 3. Narayan Prasad Betab, ‘The Deeds of Betab’
Chapter 4. Radheshyam Kathavachak, ‘My Theatre Days’
Chapter 5. Jayshankar Sundari, ‘Some Blossoms, Some Tears’
Chapter 6. Fida Husain, ‘Fifty Years in the Parsi Theatre’
Part 3
Chapter 7. Self and Subjectivity in Autobiographical Criticism
Chapter 8. Voices and Silences: Reading the Texts
Appendix 1. Historical Personages and Institutions
Appendix 2. List of Plays and Films
Glossary Hindi and Urdu Terms
Bibliography