A discussion on Inter-cultural theatre. In the Indian context we look afresh at the meaning of inter-culturalism in theatre, against the background of a long history of inter- and intra- cultural experience of European and regional influences on urban Indian theatre. Inter-culturalism, specially between Asian countries, has connecting histories, in the social, economic and cultural areas, which produced different levels of absorptions and appropriations of European texts and ideas, in arriving at an Asian ‘modernism’.

The second focus in the seminar, is related to the commissioning of Ibsen productions to young and upcoming dynamic theatre directors. Research scholars are also simultaneously commissioned to work with these directors of the younger generation, setting a new trend in developing ‘dramaturgy’ in the Indian context. The presentations of the director and research scholar’s inter-active experience, involves their speaking about how they worked together, and where they feel this interaction is leading.

The resurgence of Ibsen worldwide since 2006, has set a new trend in the interpretation of Ibsen’s texts that broadens its horizons, examining Ibsen’s texts from a more holistic social, cultural and psychological point of view, that engages with the politics of newly emerging democracies. This almost entirely and radically changes Ibsen in the contemporary Indian context, and even more so, in the way all the 5 commissioned productions of Ibsen’s plays have been treated by the Indian directors. All the plays have deconstructed Ibsen’s narrative almost entirely. This fragmentation, has then been reconstructed to connect with the consciousness of how these directors perceive their realities in a new digital, electronic and instantaneous world of changing human relationships.

Ibsen studies in Universities, in English Honors courses, continues out a compulsion of ‘academic habit’. The Delhi Ibsen Festival 2009 is further dedicated to re-awakening the power of Ibsen’s rhetoric and poetry in modern society. Interpreting Ibsen’s ideas need to undergo a change to relate to the manner in which young people look at the content of his plays. Most of the scholars interacting with the directors in the Ibsen Festival, are from University departments, and teach Ibsen’s texts to undergraduate and graduate students. Their interactive experience with theatre directors, and dramaturgical excursion into the practical world of Ibsen’s theatrical manifestations, would I hope, bring a new approach in the teaching of Ibsen’s texts, in the context of a regional cultural experience.

Nissar Allana