Folk Theatres of North India by Karan Singh

Author:Karan Singh [Singh, Karan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Performing Arts, Theater, Dance, Folk, Screenplays, Anthropology, Cultural & Social
ISBN: 9781000769722
Google: Ek7ADwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 50183417
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-11-26T00:00:00+00:00

Nietzsche’s critique of the realistic theatrical model is based on its exclusive emphasis on empirical reality which undermines the concept of the composite nature of the human persona. He traced the development of drama in its dialectical relationship between the Dionysian and Apollonian elements in the human psyche which had intimate connections with our social structures. The concept of Western realism, with its one-sided approach to complex human reality, emphasized Apollonian at the cost of Dionysian and resulted in a lopsided picture of the reality. In his analysis of Shakespearean tragedy, Nietzsche identified the Dionysian with the chorus whose disappearance from the stage produced a “superficial and banal realism of style” (Shepherd and Wallis 63). This cup and saucer kind of realism was responsible for the disconnection of social elements as well as an overemphasis on the individuation and separation of theatre from lived life in Western theatre: “It came from a strengthening of the Apollonian element, that drive to make images, the need to shoe god as real, to make its power visible to all. And the cost of it is the disappearance of the chorus, the pre-eminently Dionysian element which set up the conditions for loss of self into the crowd” (Shepherd and Wallis 63). Some of the concerns raised by Nietzsche related to the use of realism on the Western stage can also be noticed in the ideas of Antonin Artaud (1896–1948), the French actor and theorist who posed Balinese theatre against Western theatrical experiments in realism. He puts ‘dialogue’ of Western realistic theatre against ‘poetry’ of the Eastern one and finds the former lacking in theatrical spirit.

With the discredit of realistic/naturalistic theatre in the last part of the nineteenth century, the energy released by avant-garde theatre and experimental theatres of the mid-twentieth century made hitherto hidden tendencies of theatrical art visible on the surface. It led to the celebration of openness and creativity in Western theatre which until then had been narrowly confined within the proscenium stage. The freedom afforded to dramatists under these movements made them look beyond the horizons of Western culture and seek with renewed vigour those forms which were summarily rejected under the gaze of imperialism. This movement from a Eurocentric vision to multiculturalism and interculturalism led to a greater appreciation of folk forms, and their techniques and their audience participatory methods were increasingly employed in the new forms of theatres which were arising out of this interaction. A decolonization of erstwhile colonized societies and an increased awareness of the multiplicity of theatrical forms led to a rise of experiments like theatrical syncretism.

Under postmodernism, experimental theatres started looking for new idioms to express human potential in dramatic forms. These experiments increasingly used folk forms found in different parts of the world and attempted to synthesize them with the Western forms. It created hybrid performances wherein pure forms and bounded genres were rejected in favour of intercultural and multicultural theatrical forms. Richard Schechner notes in this connection: “There is no culture uninfluenced by

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