Glenn D’Cruz

My Two Left Feet: The Problem of Anglo-Indian Stereotypes in Post-Independence Indo-English Fiction

On 11 January 1998, one of the front page stories in the Bangalore edition of The Times of India – a newspaper with a readership counted in the millions – announced that ‘‘[XXXXXXX], from the University of Melbourne in Australia does not . . . know how to jive’’. When placed alongside the other front-page stories, which included accounts of a suspected Islamic fundamentalist ‘‘bomb blast’’ in Chennai, Sonia Gandhi’s launch of the Congress Party’s forthcoming election campaign, and politically motivated sectarian violence in Bihar, the newspaper’s declaration of my deficiencies as a dancer might appear somewhat trivial. Whilst obviously not of the same political significance as the aforementioned articles, my inability to jive was announced within the context of an article about factionalism within the diasporic Anglo-Indian community; the community had gathered in Bangalore to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of India’s Independence. The Anglo-Indians are an officially recognized, if rarely visible, Indian minority group. I am a nominal member of this group, although my jiving skills might suggest otherwise. The term ‘‘Anglo-Indian’’ originally referred to the British community domiciled on the Indian sub-continent. However, the 1935 Government of India Act defined an Anglo-Indian as someone ‘‘whose father or any of whose other male progenitors in the male line is or was of European descent but who is domiciled within the territory of India and is or was born within such territory of parents habitually resident therein and not My Two Left Feet

Attempts on Her Life: A Postdramatic Learning Play?

This chapter reads Martin Crimp’s play Attempts on Her Life (1997) as an exemplary instance of postdramatic writing by contextualising Crimp’s work by looking at its early critical reception and relationship to the era of ‘Cool Britannia’ and the so-called ‘In-Yer-Face’ movement. The chapter also interrogates the work’s gender politics by examining how it uses irony to deal with the (mis)representations of women within the so-called society of the spectacle. The final section of the chapter describes and analyses a range of pedagogical and political issues generated by a student production of the play I directed in 2003 with a focus on the way Ranciere’s argument about educational equality can help us unpack the ethical dilemmas generated by teaching postdramatic theatre through practice.

Ganesh Versus the Third Reich as Pedagogical Parable

This chapter is about the similarities between teaching and directing with respect to power relationships and ethics. However, its primary focus is on the celebrated play Ganesh Versus the Third Reich (2011) by Back to Back Theatre, which I read as a parable for understanding the power dynamics that suffuse all pedagogical activities. Unlike the majority of case studies in this book, Ganesh Versus the Third Reich was produced by a professional theatre company, Australia’s acclaimed Back to Back Theatre, and has no connection with a university. It does, however, provide an uncommonly astute analysis of the power relations at play within the theatre-production environment, thereby introducing one of this book’s major themes: equality, or the (im)possibility of equality, in the pedagogical situation.

Introduction: Pedagogy, Politics and the Personal

This chapter introduces the general themes of the book under three headings: pedagogy, politics and the personal. The first presents the claim that the popularity of postdramatic theatre in universities, whether written by playwrights or devised by students, is primarily due to flexible casting requirements and suitability for large groups of students. The second heading introduces the political themes of the book: the relationship between aesthetics and politics, the politics of academic institutions and the politics of teaching. The vexed relationship between aesthetics and politics is a persistent theme in the critical literature on postdramatic theatre. The chapter concludes with a brief account of Ranciere’s “distribution of the sensible” and the use of personal teaching anecdotes as a source of autoethnographic knowledge.

John Laws/Sade: Postmodern or Postdramatic?

This chapter introduces the concept of postdramatic theatre by offering two readings of The Sydney Front’s 1987 production John Laws/Sade. Initially described as a work of postmodern performance, the work displays many of the features Lehmann identifies with postdramatic theatre. It examines the similarities and differences between the vocabularies of postmodern theatre and postdramatic theatre as they are used to describe and redescribe John Laws/Sade, respectively. The chapter pays particular attention to the relationship between postdramatic theatre and the tradition of twentieth-century avant-garde drama in Europe by identifying the ways that Peter Szondi’s book Theory of Modern Drama informs Lehmann’s concept of the postdramatic. The chapter concludes with an account of the ethical perils generated by teaching avant-garde performance through practice.

Devising Postdramatic Theatre in the Academy

This chapter focuses on devised postdramatic theatre. As its point of departure, it uses the work of Gob Squad, an acclaimed theatre group whose reputation rests on its devising practices, which are perhaps best described as postdramatic. The chapter provides a close reading of War and Peace, before going on to provide a “performative” manifesto for devising postdramatic theatre with students. The chapter examines how the concept of postdramatic theatre provides a useful way into understanding the conceptual basis of such devised work with particular reference to the political and philosophical dimensions of Gob Squad’s War and Peace. The chapter also examines the way this group manipulate the performer/audience relationship to unsettle the apparently “passive” role of the spectator in dramatic theatre.

Teaching History and (Gender) Politics: The Hamletmachine and the Princess Plays

This chapter extends the discussion about the politics of pedagogy articulated in the previous chapter with an analysis of student productions of Heiner Muller’s The Hamletmachine and Elfriede Jelinek’s the Princess Plays. As much of a critique of totalitarianism as it is of capitalism, Hamletmachine demands that its actors and audience engage with Cold War history and politics. Drawing on archival videos documenting the production’s rehearsal process, I provide a self-reflexive autoethnographical account of what I have always considered my most successful attempt to teach postdramatic theatre. The chapter juxtaposes The Hamletmachine with a case study of a more recent, and perhaps less successful, student production of Elfriede Jelinek’s Princess Plays, with a particular emphasis on the students’ experience of creating a dramatic context for a postdramatic text.

From Drama to Theatre to Performance Studies

This chapter deals with the institutional and discursive relationships between postdramatic theatre and performance studies by drawing on the work of scholars such as Richard Schechner, Shannon Jackson and Jon McKenzie. It contends that performance studies not only establishes a condition of possibility for Lehmann’s work in the academy but also provides an eclectic set of methodological tools and theoretical perspectives that enable a richer understanding of the political efficacy of postdramatic theatre. After providing a brief account of the genealogy of performance studies, by engaging with the work of Shannon Jackson, among others, I use Jon McKenzie’s seminal work Perform—Or Else? (2001) to help me identify the institutional performance imperatives and pressures that enable and constrain teaching practices within universities.

An Enemy of Postdramatic Theatre? Or, What I Think About When I Think About Teaching Postdramatic Theatre

This articulates a set of anxieties about teaching postdramatic theatre through a reading of Thomas Ostermeier’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People. It offers a final assessment of the utility and strengths of Lehmann’s concept of postdramatic theatre with particular reference to questions of pedagogy, politics and aesthetics. In the epilogue to Postdramatic Theatre, Lehmann states that postdramatic theatre engages with a certain kind of pedagogy that deliberately formulates non-rational approaches to contesting the hegemony of consumer society. The chapter concludes by posing a series of questions about the future of Lehmann’s concept: does the vocabulary of postdramatic theatre operate as a practical pedagogical tool today? Do we need to formulate new, more invigorating ideas to engage with contemporary performance? And if so, what kind of vocabulary might displace Lehmann’s?

Breaking bad: the booing of Adam Goodes and the politics of the black sports celebrity in Australia

It is a Friday night at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), one of the world’s premier sporting stadiums. It is 24 May 2013 to be precise, and the football game in progress marks the beginning of the Australian Football League (ALF) ‘indigenous round’. This annual event recognises and celebrates Aboriginal players and their culture. It is late in the fourth quarter, and the result of the game is beyond dispute. After a 13-year drought, the Sydney Swans will finally defeat the Collingwood football club. However, the game will not be remembered for this historic footnote, for as the players go through the motions of contesting the final minutes of a one-sided game something happens that exposes a deep, divisive fissure within Australian society. Adam Goodes, one of the League’s most decorated indigenous footballers, perfunctorily kicks the ball out of bounds as his opponent closes in behind him. It is clear that the ‘sting’ has gone out of this game. Then, suddenly, Goodes turns around and points to someone in the crowd. He summons nearby security officers as he continues to point and gesticulate. It transpires that Goodes has identified a heckler who called him an ‘Ape’. The perpetrator of this act is a 13-year-old girl clad in Collingwood paraphernalia. The epithet ‘Ape’ is often used as a racist taunt against black players in Europe’s football (soccer) leagues, and Goodes is in no doubt about the word’s racist connotations. Security guards evict the girl from the stadium. The police subsequently question her about the incident. The officials of the AFL go into damage control. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, the president of the Collingwood Football Club, Eddie McGuire, goes into the Sydney Swans room, seeks out Goodes and profusely apologises for the incident. The Collingwood coach, Nathan Buckley, also apologises and expresses disgust at the vilification of Goodes at his post-game press conference, stating that the club will support Goodes and ‘do anything we need to do to further improve the attitudes in society. Footy reflects society, and this is a situation that highlights that’ (Buckley 2013). Several prominent AFL players watching the game on TV tweet their support for Goodes, and affirm their stand against racism. A few days later, Andrew Demetriou, then CEO of the AFL, writes an article supporting Goodes’ stand against racism: