Call for chapter proposals for an edited volume

on

Off the Stage: Performance Practices in Postcolonial India

The post-Independence Indian theatre has been largely influenced by the realist theatre tradition of the West with some persistent exceptions in different regions across India, that are committed to revive, explore and establish the Indianness of Indian theatre, however complex the notion of ‘Indian’ may be. As the nationalist movement in colonial India had gained momentum in the first half of the twentieth century, theatre practitioners attempted to decolonise Indian theatre by imbibing indigenous cultural forms and expressions beyond the Proscenium. In fact, the postcolonial intersection in Indian theatre was ushered in by rejecting ‘the modernity associated with western modes of representation’ and by asserting an ‘alternative postcolonial modernity based on premodern indigenous traditions of performance’ (Dharwadker 2019, 22). The concerns raised in the First Drama Seminar in New Delhi in 1956 on the need to create a ‘new’ theatre for the ‘new’ nation, that was self-conscious and self-reflexive, found expressions through movements such as People’s Theatre (already practised by IPTA), the Theatre of Roots and Third Theatre. Various forms of folk, traditional and regional performances were also revived to strengthen the drive towards Indianness in performance making—in terms of the use of performance elements, performers’ training, selection of performance space and content for dramatization. These performances have been mostly addressed to the commons of the society, where the issues and concerns of the grassroots are primarily explored.

One of the most significant engagements in the postcolonial Indian theatre has been with place as performance space, where place and person intersect to allow place to be a potential actant in the playmaking process as well as its meaning production. When a performance embodies social or historical situatedness beyond the Proscenium stage, it attains a wider provision to intersect with performance of protest, narrative of resistance, sociopolitical activism and unorthodox conditions. The environment of an open-air unorthodox performance space surrounds, sustains and contains the performance and contributes to its meaning production—creating an embodied experience for the spectators.  

Postcolonial Indian theatre has also witnessed the rise of applied performance practices where a play is developed through participatory workshop with non-actors belonging to a particular community in focus. Such productions are mostly research-oriented, workshop-based, community-centred and purpose-driven, where the entire playmaking process is shared by the participants, collaborators, facilitators or performers. Sometimes the barrier between the performers and the spectators becomes fluid and an intersection of body, space and environment is observed. Although the community performances in unorthodox performance spaces in local communities broadly diverge from the commerciality of the Proscenium convention, the lack of consistent financial support and enthusiastic collaborators poses a constant threat to their survival in India.

In this background, this edited volume seeks to critically engage with the non-Proscenium forms and practices of theatre performances in postcolonial India, which have shaped a distinct Indian identity in terms of performance making. The performance forms and practices may be examined through diverse cultural, theoretical and theatrical discourses in the postcolonial Indian context. The seemingly overlapping performance practices and ideas listed below are only indicative and not restrictive in nature.  

People’s theatre: Nationalism, Cultural activism and the Mass

Indigenous performance: Folk, Traditional and Ritual

The Theatre of Roots: Rooted, Uprooted or De-rooted?

Street theatre: Politics, Propaganda and Social activism

Performance of protest: Art, Dissent and Performativity

Applied performance: Therapy, Education and Engagement

Participatory performance: Research, Workshop and Collaboration

Intimate performance: Body, Space and Proximity

Ecological performance: Ecology, Climate change and Green dramaturgy

Organic theatre: Nature, Embeddedness and Organicity

Site-specific performance: Art, Aesthetics and Environment

Please send chapter proposals of around 400 to 500 words along with a brief bio of 100 words to offthestage2026@gmail.com by 10th February 2025.

Important Dates:

Last Date of submission of chapter proposals: 10th February 2025

Notification of acceptance: 25th February 2025

Full chapters due: 30th June 2025

Revision and resubmission: 15th August to 15th October

Publication: Mid 2026

Editor: Pranab Kumar Mandal, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Ramakrishna Mission Residential College (Autonomous), Narendrapur (affiliated to the University of Calcutta)

Proposed publishing house: Palgrave Macmillan/Bloomsbury/Springer Nature/Routledge

Contact: offthestage2026@gmail.com