Theatre, Activism, Subjectivity

Bishnupriya Dutt is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru UniversitySilvija Jestrovic is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Warwick

Drawing from both past and present, using the interdisciplinary hermeneutics of theatre, politics, and performance, this collections explores: how to do activism, make theatre, and be in the world through the Leftist paradigms and ethos? What are the political, cultural, personal, and collective dramaturgies through which to recuperate the Leftist care for commons for our time? The Left is framed here as a large umbrella term for a range of progressive cultural and political practices, as well as a way of living/being in the world. The focus on plural cultural Lefts draws attention to different histories of Leftist political and cultural practices and to the dialectics between official and unofficial Lefts--between the totalising ideological framework and its smaller-scale manifestations. The conceptual focus is on the dialectics of the macro- and the micro-plane of the Leftist histories, legacies, and current forms of resistance as they occur through different dramaturgies of activism, but also through theatre and everyday life.In our times of political confusion--when Leftist agendas and struggles often collapse or become appropriated by Right--the necessity of recovering the Leftist ethos of solidarity, social justice, and care for the commons seems more urgent than ever. How to grapple with the complexities of the Left: its theatres and theatricalities, its modes of activism, its subjects and subjectivities?