HowlRound Theatre Commons: Theatre has yet to be culturally inculcated as an everyday art form in India—and especially in the capital, Delhi—the way painting, music, or dance is. It is often an elite affair. What is presented onstage is chosen for the particular audience and limited to their tehzeeb (morality). Classics get repeated as safe grounds for performance, and plays with real issues of provincial and queer nature get filtered out. Even so, interestingly, the metropolis lights up with shows and theatre festivals in the evenings.
2 comments:
This article is kind of all over the place but I definitely see where this is getting at. As an Indian American person, I can confidently say that sexuality of any kind isn't really something that is talked about in an average Indian household. Even though I am a rather open person with my life, I wouldn't ever talk about these things with my parents just because it is simply not appropriate. I understand why they don't have a strong presence of sexuality in theatre or film in India, and most of that is due to demand, if your audience doesn't like watching that type of stuff, they won't, and in India there are far less patrons of the theatre then there are in the United States. I think that breaking barriers is important and I would have no problem with any production containing sexually explicit language or action but I also believe it's important to acknowledge and respect the beliefs and lifestyles of the Indian people and learn to tell those stories in ways that are more pleasing to the broader audience.
Wow. There is a lot to unpack in this article. It sounds like they went through a similar formula as the British theatre ( I wonder why (don’t get me started, I already don’t like this topic). But is seems its taken a lot longer for the acceptance of the queer interaction that nature (in my opinion) accrues when you put or alone men to openly portray famine traits. I think because there was always a secular event in most other cultures they were never strictly watch for unfavorable behavior. I real appreciate the religious strength go the Indian people. With the little I think that it has been a fair one with the exception of sexuality. But I am so glad that the culture is coming around in the past few decades to start to except the DIQTEF community now. I did not realize how much their faith had to do with theatre in their culture. That in it self is very interesting.
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