Paper short abstract:

The paper shows how theatre in colonial Bengal emerged as the gentleman’s cultural alternative with strong western influences and critically reviews the subsequent changes in it,ultimately rejecting coloniality and creating a public space of its own.

Paper long abstract:

Theatre is not merely a part of literature but a multiple art using words, scenic efforts, music, the gestures of the actors and the organizing talents of a producer.From this context, Bengali theatre had played its distinctive role as a worthwhile aesthetic experience in the nineteenth century. The society of Bengal was swept off its traditional moorings by the storm of western cultural aggression. The western educated gentleman or bhadralok's cultural alternative to the folk forms was the modern theatre , with new Victorian values and modes of expressions.The present paper analyses the prevailing standards of this cultural production and critically reviews the subsequent stages through which these standards had been transformed. The subsumed domination of a colonial ideology went hand in hand with this transformation of cultural production. Performing art as an expression of the social agenda of the gentlemen received the support of the colonial masters while political issues were rejected and gagged by laws like the Dramatic Performances Act of 1876. Gradually, the rise of nationalist identity infused into Bengali theatre a spirit of nostalgia and traditional historicality, which began to reject colonial influences, As the earlier appreciation of the colonial masters was no more, the stage had to concentrate once more in stereotyped social issues and historical romances, containing a subtle and hidden demand for freedom. By this time Bengali theatre had become a successful commercial and proliferating business of the region.