Azim Premji University recently organised a talk on the topic 'Theatre, Community and Nation: the Mimetic Imagination of Ritwik Ghatak' at the Azim Premji University.
The talk which was open to all had assistant professor of drama at Stanford University, Jisha Menon as the key speaker.
The topic revolved around 'What is the work of theatre in the making of community and nation?' By looking at Ritwik Ghatak’s 1961 film Komal Gandhar, this talk considered the ways in which theatre engenders a creative space for sociality in the wake of the sub-continental partition.
Ghatak had used the frame of theatre to suggest that it is not in withdrawal from society but rather in artistic sociality and political solidarity that the work of poesis must be undertaken.
About the speaker:
Jisha Menon is Assistant Professor of Drama at Stanford University.
Her forthcoming book, 'The Performance of Nationalism: India, Pakistan', and the 'Memory of Partition' is published by Cambridge University Press.
Jisha specialises in postcolonial theory and performance studies.
Her research interests lie at the intersection of religion and secularity, gender and nationalism, cosmopolitanism and globalisation.
She has published essays on the Indian partition, transnational feminist theatre, and sexual and political violence in South Asia.
Her current project, 'Bordering on Drama: Community and Nation in Postcolonial India', is an interdisciplinary booklength study which examines the theatricality of nationalism in South Asia.