Rashna Darius Nicholson - The Colonial Public and the Parsi Stage: The Making of the Theatre of Empire (1853-1893)

Transnational Theatre Histories illuminates vectors of cultural exchange, migration, appropriation, and circulation that long predate the more recent trends of neoliberal globalization. Books in the series document and theorize the emergence of theatre, opera, dance, and performance against backgrounds such as imperial expansion, technological development, modernity, industrialization, colonization, diplomacy, and cultural self-determination. Proposals are invited on topics such as: theatrical trade routes; public spheres through cross-cultural contact; the role of multi-ethnic metropolitan centers and port cities; modernization and modernity experienced in transnational contexts; new materialism: objects moving across borders and regions; migration and recombination of aesthetics and forms; colonization and decolonization as transnational projects; performance histories of cross- or inter-cultural contact; festivals, exchanges, partnerships, collaborations, and co-productions; diplomacy, state and extra-governmental involvement, support, or subversion; historical perspectives on capital, finance, and administration; processes of linguistic and institutional translation; translocality, glocality, transregional and omnilocal vectors; developing new forms of collaborative authorship.

Series Editors

Christopher B. Balme (LMU Munich)

Catherine M. Cole (University of Washington)

Tracy C. Davis (Northwestern)

Editorial Board

Leo Cabranes-Grant (UC Santa Barbara, USA)

Khalid Amine (Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Ttouan, Morocco)

Laurence Senelick (Tufts University, USA)

Rustom Bharucha (JNU, New Delhi, India)

Margaret Werry (University of Minnesota, USA)

Maria Helena Werneck (Federal University of Rio de Janiero, Brazil)

Catherine Yeh (Boston University, USA/ University of Heidelberg, Germany)

Marlis Schweitzer (York University; Canada)

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14397

This book is the revised version of a doctoral thesis entitled The Theatre of Empire submitted to the Faculty of History and the Arts, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany.

Cover image: An Actress in a Fine Company. India., H. C. White Company, 1996.0009.WX25689, Keystone-Mast Collection, UCR/California Museum of Photography, University of California at Riverside.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG

The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

As this work formally began in 2010, the debt that I owe to several individuals and institutions is significant. The first draft of this book was completed as a doctoral thesis entitled The Theatre of Empire at the DFG-Graduiertenkolleg Globalisierung, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. I thank first and foremost Christopher Balme, Christoph Neumann, and Robert Stockhammer, who taught me my first lessons in history-writing.

Research for this book was conducted at the following private and public archives: the J. N. Petit Institute, Mumbai; the K. R. Cama Oriental Institute, Mumbai; the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai; the Alexandra High School, Mumbai; the Maharashtra State Archives, Mumbai; the Unesco Parzor Foundation, New Delhi; the Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi; the National School of Drama, New Delhi; the National Archives of India, New Delhi; the Natarang Pratishthan, New Delhi; the Calcutta Parsi Amateur Dramatics Club, Kolkata; the National Library, Kolkata; the Natyashodh Sansthan, Kolkata; the British Library; and the New York Public Library. The generosity of Muncherji Cama, Nawaz Mody, Shernaz Cama, Bahadur and Ratan Postwalla, and the staff of the J. N. Petit Institute cannot be overstated.

This book is undergirded as much by anecdotes, family photographs, and memories as by archival research; I am grateful to the late Noshir Gherda, the Khatow family (Vinci Khatow, Percy Khatow, Aspi Khatow, Tony Parr), the Madan family (Rustom Bharucha and Gool Ardeshir), the Khambatta family (Shirin Vakil, Rukshan Vakil, and Daulat Mewawala), the Marzban family (Ardeshir Dubash), the Kabraji family (the late Rusi Vaccha and Jal Mehta), and the Sethna family (Ms. Raja).

For their continued intellectual support, special acknowledgement is due to the IFTR Historiography Working Group. Claire Cochrane is singled out for her counsel and encouragement. For pointing me in unseen directions, I thank my colleagues at the Institute of Theatre Studies at the LMU, Munich: Judith Rottenburg, MeL Yamomo, Nic Leonhardt, Anirban Ghosh, Gero Toegl, and my friends Carla Nobre Sousa, Jo Tyabji, Simin Patel, Saachi Chitkara, Danilo Spanicciati, and Richard Bsel. The courage and strength of my colleagues and students and the institutional support from the School of English at the University of Hong Kong made the revisions of this book possible. I am grateful to Otto Heim, Jessica Valdez, Julia Kuehn, Janny Leung, the anonymous reviewers, Catherine M. Cole, Jessica Hinds-Bond, Jack Heeney, and especially Tracy C. Davis for their advice during the publishing process.