British South Asian theatre has been one of the most significant features of diasporic artistic activity throughout the world in the last thirty years, but despite its remarkable achievements it has remained largely uncharted. This book aims to reverse that neglect. The book has its origins in a four-year research project at the University of Exeter that set out to document the presence of South Asians on the British stage, from magicians of the C19th through to the new generations of British theatre artists of South Asian extraction. The research has drawn on unpublished archives and an extensive series of interviews on the history of British Asian theatre-making. An accompanying DVD will provide an album of historical documents, programmes, designs, photographs, and clips from archival recordings of rehearsals and productions. The development of many British Asian-led companies of the last thirty years, including Tara Arts, Tamasha and Kali, is covered in detail in this book. See contents on next page for full list of companies covered in detail in the book.

About the Author

Graham Ley is Professor of Drama and Theory at the University of Exeter. He has also taught drama at the Universities of London and Auckland, and has both directed and translated for the theatre. He has written and published widely, including A Short Introduction to Ancient Greek Theater 2nd revised edition (University of Chicago Press, 2006) and The Theatricality of Greek Tragedy (University of Chicago Press, 2007) Sarah Dadswell was Research Fellow to the project in the Department of Drama at the University of Exeter. She has worked and travelled extensively in South Asia.

Table of Contents

Introduction; Naseem Khan - British Asian Theatre: the Long Road to Now, and the Barriers in-between; Colin Chambers - Images on Stage: A Historical Survey of South Asians in British Theatre before 1975; Susan Croft - Two Worlds?: Asian Theatre and Alternative Theatre in Tower Hamlets in the 1980s; Rukhsana Ahmad - Experiments in Theatre from the Margins: Text, Performance and New Writers; Christiane Schlote - Dramatising Refuge(e)s: Rukhsana Ahmad's Song for a Sanctuary and Tanika Gupta's Sanctuary; Chris Banfield - Directing Storytelling Performance and Storytelling Theatre; Claire Cochrane - Engaging the Audience: a Comparative Analysis of Developmental Strategies in Birmingham and Leicester since the 1990s; Victoria Sams - Patriarchy and Its Discontents: the 'Kitchen-Sink Drama' of Tamasha Theatre Company; Suman Bhuchar - The Marketing of Commercial and Subsidized Theatre to British Asian Audiences: Bombay Dreams (2002) and Tamasha's Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and a Funeral (1998 and 2001); Jerri Daboo - Mixing with the Mainstream: Transgressing the Identity of Place; Giovanna Buonanno - Between Page and Stage: Meera Syal in British Asian Culture; Dominic Hingorani - Tara Arts (1997 - 2007): Mapping a 'Binglish' Diaspora; Chandrika Patel - Imagine, Indiaah...on the British Stage: Exploring Tara's 'Binglish' and Tamasha's Brechtian Approaches; Rajni Shah - On the Making of Mr Quiver; Bibliography.