Advanced International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research

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Myth, Memory, and Modernity: Folklore Adaptation in Anglo-Indian and Postcolonial Indian Drama

Author(s) G. Yadagiri
Country India
Abstract This paper examines the adaptation of myth and folklore across two distinct but historically linked traditions of Indian theatre in English: the Anglo-Indian drama of the colonial period and the postcolonial Indian drama that emerged after 1947. It argues that folklore functions in both traditions not as decorative ornament but as a contested site where colonial anxiety, nationalist recovery, and postcolonial critique intersect. Beginning with colonial theatre's constrained engagement with indigenous story-forms, the paper traces the "theatre of roots" movement's deliberate return to myth, ritual, and folk performance as a strategy of decolonization, before turning to close readings of Girish Karnad's Hayavadana and Naga-Mandala, and a briefer discussion of Tughlaq, Taledanda, and the plays of Mahesh Dattani and Vijay Tendulkar. Drawing on Aparna Dharwadker's account of postcolonial dramatic genres and Erin Mee's study of the theatre of roots movement, the paper contends that myth in modern Indian drama functions simultaneously as cultural memory and as a modernizing device, allowing playwrights to stage unresolved tensions of gender, history, and national identity. The paper concludes that folklore adaptation in Indian drama constitutes an ongoing negotiation between inherited memory and contemporary modernity rather than a simple recovery of a stable past.
Keywords myth; folklore; postcolonial Indian drama; Anglo-Indian theatre; Girish Karnad; theatre of roots; cultural memory; modernity
Discipline Other
Published In Volume 1, Issue 1, July-August 2023
Published On 2023-07-08
DOI https://doi.org/10.62127/aijmr.2023.v01i01.1448
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