Sanskrit plays on European stages (and elsewhere)

Jean-Luc CHEVILLARD jlc at CCR.JUSSIEU.FR
Fri Nov 13 10:57:05 UTC 1998


Thanks to Lars Martin Fosse, Rebecca Manring
and Yaroslav V. Vassilkov for their answers.

Of course, when I said "European stages", I did not mean
to exclude the United States of America (to mention at least
one country outside Europe ...).

I think I should may be further extend my question
to performances of translations
into modern languages (including English)
of classical Sanskrit plays on Indian stages.

The general question being of course
"Where is Sanskrit theatre alive?"
in the sense that we can say that
Shakespeare is alive to-day in Paris:
1. you can go today or tomorrow
 to the Théatre de la Ville and see
 a performance (in French) of
 "La Nuit des Rois" ("Twelfth Night")
2. you can go today or tomorrow
 to the Théatre Lucien Paye and see
 a performance (in French) of
 "Roméo et Juliette" ("Romeo and Juliet")
3. you can go today or tomorrow
 to the Théatre l'Athénée and see a play
 "librement inspirée de William Shakespeare"
 under the title of "La Tragédie de Coriolan"

Where is Bhavabhuti alive?
Where is Kalidasa alive?
Why are they not so very much alive as Shakespeare is?
 (I tend to think this is partly because the field of INDOLOGY
  has been from the beginning confiscated to some extent
  by indo-europeanists but this is of course
  a very partial answer .... :-)
  and not a criticism ;-)

-- Jean-Luc CHEVILLARD (Paris)





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