E-Paper
All about Indian theatre
This voluminous seminal work on Indian theatre spans over 2,00 years and covers almost everything on the subject.
The Oxford Companion to Indian Theatre
Edited by Ananda Lal
Oxford University Press
2004
Theatre
Pages: 580
Price: Rs 2,500
ISBN: 019564468
Hardback
Seven years ago, when Oxford University Press approached Ananda Lal for ideas, Lal came up with his pet theme, theatre, almost sure that the proposal would be turned down. He was wrong.
The writer, theatre critic and professor of English literature at Jadavpur University wasn’t aware that he would be, in a way, making history. He has edited , a seminal, one-of-a-kind work spanning 2,000 years of Indian theatre, in both rural and urban forms and encompassing different genres and histories of diverse theatre traditions.
The tome, comprising 750 entries, has contributions from 63 specialists of the Indian theatre scene.
True to Oxford Companion style, it adopts an alphabetical approach. So if one wanted to look up Bengali Theatre one would turn to B where one would find a brief history of the evolution of Bengali theatre.
The names of the personalities that figure in the text are marked with asterisks. The book took more than seven years of perseverance, involving a fine balancing act. With 22 regional languages contributing to the growth of various versions of theatre, Lal assessed the importance of each entry before deciding on the space each genre would occupy.
