Decolonizing the Stage: Theatrical Syncretism and Post-Colonial Drama - Tapa dura

Since major studies of post-colonial drama are scarce, as are attempts to place Indian drama in a global context, we can be doubly grateful to Christopher Balme for his excellent book. (Years Work in English Studies)

Decolonizing the Stage is a major study devoted to post-colonial drama and theatre. It examines the way dramatists and directors from various countries and societies have attempted to fuse the performance idioms of their indigenous traditions with the Western dramatic form. These experiments are termed 'syncretic theatre'. The study provides a theoretically sophisticated, cross-cultural comparative approach to a wide number of writers, regions, and theatre movements, ranging from Maori, Aboriginal, and native American theatre to Township theatre in South Africa. Writers studied include Nobel Prize-winning authors such as Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott, and Rabindranath Tagore, along with others such as Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Jack Davis, Girish Karnad, and Tomson Highway. Decolonizing the Stage demonstrates how the dynamics of syncretic theatrical texts function in performance. It combines cultural semiotics with performance analysis to provide an important contribution to the growing field of post-colonial drama and intercultural performance.