Brecht in India

Reviewed by: Brecht in India: The Poetics and Politics of Transcultural Theatre by Dr. Prateek Kristen Rudisill BRECHT IN INDIA: THE POETICS AND POLITICS OF TRANSCULTURAL THEATRE. By Dr. Prateek (sic). Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2021; pp. 200. Dr. Prateek's book is a nuanced analysis of Bertolt Brecht's influence in the Hindi belt of India between the 1960s and the '90s. He adds to the existing scholarship on Brecht in India by moving beyond intersections with Indian classical drama to focus on the political character of this theatre and its connections to working-class and exploited people in the postcolonial nation. The details of specific Indian performances, especially in comparison with Brecht's own productions of his plays, demonstrate how varied Brechtian aesthetics are within the Indian context. By moving away from the idea that the European work is at the center and the postcolonial adaptations are imitative, Prateek articulates ways that Indian directors reworked Brecht's plays and devices [End Page 533] to create an identifiable Indian Brechtian aesthetic. His main argument is that Indian theatre directors, in their reshaping of Brechtian aesthetics, "turned it into a 'pharmakon,'" which he defines as "a paradox: a resistance to one meaning" (3). Brechtian theatre, he convincingly demonstrates, is not a continuous European tradition, but one that has been altered, reworked, and combined with other theatrical traditions across the world to create variants with their own motivations and objectives. This book fills a gap in both Brechtian and modern Indian theatre scholarship, comprehensively addressing the manifestation of Brechtian theatre within the Indian context. Brechtian theatre is not an abstract concept, but one that comes alive within particular social and political contexts, and Prateek has given a thorough analysis of a concrete example in this book. It is more limited than "Indian," however, and covers only the "Hindi belt" of the subcontinent, excluding discussion of South Indian, Bengali, or other language productions to focus on the phenomenon in urban North Indian cities, especially Delhi. This work constructs a solid base for other scholars to extend the argument to other regions in India where Brecht is being performed. Indian directors have been seriously engaging with Brecht's work from the mid-1950s, when playwright Balwant Gargi visited Germany to meet Brecht and Bengali adaptations were staged in India. In 1963, a special issue on Brecht's work was published in Hindustani Theatre: A Monthly Journal of the Arts. In 1968, special issues on Brecht were published by two Indian theatre journals, Enact and Natarang. In the Enact issue, playwright and director Habib Tanvir made the now famous statements that "to be more Brechtian ... would mean that we have to be more Indian" (49), and that "if the Indian playwrights evolve a truly indigenous theatre, it will be a truly Brechtian theatre" (10). That same year, Ebrahim Alkazi, director of the National School of Drama, invited German directors Carl Weber and Fritz Bennewitz to produce Brecht's plays in Delhi. Despite all this history, Prateek's work is the first monograph that analyzes Brecht in India. The book brings together a wide variety of Hindi performances over a thirty-year span to demonstrate the diversity of the tradition of Brechtian Indian theatre. Simultaneously, it shows that this is a unique and identifiable aesthetic, separate from the European one. Prateek conceives of Brechtian theatre as encompassing a number of different theatrical terms, including "epic," "non-Aristotelian," "gestic," "dialectical," and "of the scientific age." Indian practitioners have conflated these terms to conceive of a theatre that uses self-reflexive devices to draw attention to social and economic forces and encourages audiences to reflect on situations and resist embedded power structures. Indian directors transformed Brecht and used the traditions they were familiar with to resist the hegemonic powers within their own nation. Brecht's work, in turn, helped Indian theatre to diversify and envision a political postcolonial nation. The chapters include close readings of productions of Brecht in India by Fritz Bennewitz, Amal Allana, Tanvir, and the Hindustani Theatre (Sathyu), along with an original play by street-theatre artist Safdar Hashmi that relies upon Brechtian aesthetics. Prateek follows Aparna Dharwadker to assert that the productions he analyzes

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