Ananda Lal, Centrestage: Essays on Theatre, India and Intercultural Seagull Books, Calcutta. 2025. Pp.187. Rs. 699.

Abstract

This review essay critically examines Centrestage: Essays on Theatre, India and Intercultural by Ananda Lal, positioning the work within the broader neglect of theatre studies in Indian English literary discourse. The essay foregrounds the marginal status of drama in comparison to fiction and highlights the scarcity of rigorous theatrical historiography in India, particularly the lack of English translations and critical documentation of regional performances. It argues that Lal’s volume partially fills this scholarly gap by offering research-driven essays that document performance histories, especially those centred on West Bengal, while also addressing Indian English drama and the historiography of modern Indian theatre. The reviewer emphasizes Lal’s distinctive theatre-historical methodology, which prioritizes production details—direction, acting, stagecraft, and audience reception—over purely thematic literary criticism, thereby making the work especially valuable for practitioners of theatre. The essay further evaluates Lal’s reflections on pedagogical reforms in Indian universities, noting both the desirability and practical challenges of integrating performance-based theatre pedagogy in English departments. In its discussion of intercultural theatre, the review highlights Lal’s analysis of cross-cultural exchanges between Indian and Western theatrical traditions, referencing figures such as August Strindberg, Jerzy Grotowski, Bertolt Brecht, Richard Schechner, Tim Supple, and Peter Brook. The review also underscores Lal’s corrective intervention in exposing factual inaccuracies in major Western reference works on Asian and Indian theatre, attributing these errors to linguistic and methodological limitations. The essay concludes that Centrestage is a significant scholarly contribution that documents a neglected field, challenges Western misrepresentations, and calls for greater institutional engagement by Indian scholars and publishers in theatre historiography. The book is recommended as an essential resource for researchers, theatre practitioners, and academic libraries interested in Indian theatre studies.