Download or read book The Colonial Staged written by Sudipto Chatterjee and published by Seagull Books Pvt Ltd. This book was released on 2007 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the late eighteenth century, Calcutta, first city of the British Empire, has been a hub of intersecting ideas and movements of change. Nowhere did the restless currents of history play themselves out more graphically than in the composite art of theatre and performance. This pioneering study of the history of Bengali theatre looks at the plays mounted in the city in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and their reception. It goes on to study the cultural efflorescence known as the 'Bengal Renaissance' and the subsequent politicization of a theatre imbued with ideas of nationalism and social reform, with a particular focus on the complex and problematic issue of the place of women in theatre.