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Podcast: New Books in South Asian Studies
Episode: Rashna Darius Nicholson, "The Colonial Public and the Parsi Stage: The Making of the Theatre of Empire (1853-1893)" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
Description: Rashna Darius Nicholson’s The Colonial Public and the Parsi Stage: The Making of the Theatre of Empire (1853-1893) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) is the first comprehensive study of the Parsi theatre, colonial South and Southeast Asia’s most influential cultural phenomenon and the precursor of the Indian cinema industry. By providing extensive, unpublished information on its first actors, audiences, production methods, and plays, this book traces how the theatre - which was one of the first in the Indian subcontinent to adopt European stagecraft - transformed into a pan-Asian entertainment industry in the second half of the nineteenth century. Nicholson sheds l...