Thinking through the Pandemic: A Performative Perspective
In a freewheeling range of thoughts on the relationship between the pandemic and the practice of theatre and performance, this talk shed light on a number of issues in a dialogical mode of address. This included the rationale behind the global closure of theatres independently of discussion and debate in civil society, and the difference between the present shutdown and earlier pandemics when theatres and cinemas remained open. Rustom Bharucha walked us through the ways in which tropes relating to ‘contamination’ and ‘contagion’ are treated as metaphors in performative discourse, and the impact of social distancing in initiating new modes of performances in the cultures of everyday life. Finally, the talk touched upon the affirmation of social protest in public assemblies during the time of the pandemic, and the need to arrive at a new concept of care through a renewed attention to the art of breathing.
About the Dramaturg
Rustom Bharucha is the author of Theatre and the World, The Politics of Cultural Practice, The Question of Faith, In the Name of the Secular, Rajasthan: An Oral History, Another Asia and Terror and Performance. He is in the process of completing a new monograph on the second wave of the pandemic in India which deals with death, grief, mourning, and extinction.
