When we speak of modern Indian drama, we must begin with the proscenium stage, that grand architectural gift — or perhaps imposition — brought by the British in the 18th century. Picture it: a framed world, a velvet curtain, a clear divide between performer and audience, all so unlike the open, fluid spaces of our traditional performances — be it the vibrant chaos of a Naqqal performance, or the sacred intimacy of Koodiyattam.

The proscenium stage, with its European roots, arrived like a guest who rearranges the house of his host. It wasn’t just a stage; it was a way of seeing, a way of storytelling that carried the weight of colonial sensibilities yet sparked something entirely new in India.

Let me share how this happened.

Unlike other civilisations, this theatrical inheritance of modern Indian drama has an astonishingly diverse range of acting traditions, performance genres and storytelling lineages shaped by regional and linguistic multiplicity. A palimpsest with a layered text of rituals, myths, social commentary, and aesthetic innovation that stretches across 5,000 years. From the codified poetics of the ‘Natya Shastra’ to the raw immediacy of folk forms like Jatra, Tamasha and Theyyam, these were not mere modes of entertainment but acts that wove communities together. These forms carried the weight of centuries, yet remained alive and mutable.

Ironically, what we now recognise as modern Indian theatre finds its genesis not in these organic traditions, but in the arrival of the East India Company at Calcutta in 1690.

The East India Company, initially a trading enterprise, evolved into a powerful colonial force that reshaped India’s political, economic and cultural landscape. Alongside their muskets and ledgers, the British brought their cultural apparatus, including theatre. For them, drama was not just entertainment but an extension of the imperial order. In 1775, the British established the Calcutta Theatre, where Shakespearean tragedies and Restoration comedies were staged for the officers and their families.

These proscenium-style productions were antithetical to India’s fluid, cyclical performance styles. Traditional, folk and classical performances in India thrived in open spaces — temples, courtyards, village squares. The arrival of the proscenium stage symbolised a new epistemology of performance.

For Indian audiences, especially the emerging Bengali elite, the allure of this foreign theatre was profound. Educated in English and exposed to western aesthetics, they began to absorb and adapt these styles, leading to the emergence of a hybrid form: the Parsi theatre.

By the mid-19th century, the Parsi theatre had emerged as a dynamic amalgamation of western melodrama, Indian mythology and indigenous musical traditions. Performed in Gujarati and Urdu, it was commercial, portable and wildly popular — touring across cities and small towns, reaching audiences far removed from elite salons.

It combined the grandeur of Sanskrit drama with the populism of folk narratives, and even adapted ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Hamlet’. Parsi theatre blurred the boundaries between East and West, elite and popular, sacred and secular.

The British tried to systematically undermine traditional support structures for Indian theatre. Royal courts, which had long sponsored Sanskrit drama, lost their power. Temples, once centres of devotional performances, were stripped of endowments. Folk forms were dismissed as “primitive”. The colonial masters attempted to refashion Indian stories into moralistic tales aligned with Victorian values. In doing so, they sought to erase, or at least control, the theatrical imagination of a rich and complex civilisation.

Gymkhana Clubs became the social hubs of British India. Established in urban centres like Bombay, Madras and Calcutta, these served as exclusive recreational areas for the British officials and their families. Theatrical performances — staged in club halls or makeshift prosceniums, and often performed by amateur troupes made up of British civil servants and memsahibs — had a repertoire that included Shakespearean plays, English comedies and farces. They were primarily meant to replicate the comfort of English life in an alien land. Indian audiences were generally excluded, underscoring the racial and cultural segregation of colonial society. Even when Indian elites were invited, it was under the guise of assimilation, not inclusion.

Ironically, these performances sparked curiosity and, eventually, subversion amongst the Indians, who attended these performances. They began to reinterpret these styles in their own language — sometimes imitating, often parodying, and occasionally critiquing, the content in a way that could be seen as seditious.

By the mid-19th century, a new form of theatre was emerging — one that wielded the stage as a political weapon. Dinabandhu Mitra’s ‘Nil Darpan’ (1860), a devastating expose on the exploitation of indigo farmers by British planters, marked a turning point. Written in Bengali, the play was translated into English and performed for both Indian and British audiences. It caused a sensation. So threatening was its tone that it provoked the passage of the Dramatic Performances Act of 1876, a law designed to suppress politically-charged theatre.

Thus was born a radical form of Indian theatre, one that encoded dissent through allegory, satire and historical drama. The plays mocked colonial officers with coded humour. Characters from epics like the Ramayana  were repurposed; villains were given English accents and heroes symbolised resistance.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed a complex evolution. Indian playwrights, particularly in Bengal and Maharashtra, began to claim the proscenium stage — not to imitate British theatre but to define their own sense of self in a changing world.

The plays of Michael Madhusudan Dutt and Rabindranath Tagore, and later Girish Karnad, Vijay Tendulkar and Badal Sircar, used theatre to explore nationalism, identity and social reform. The 1960s and the ’70s saw a proliferation of plays that reimagined classical narratives to reflect contemporary anxieties. ‘Andha Yug’ by Dharamvir Bharati showed the futility of war. Using the archetype characters from the Mahabharata, he gave them allegorical meanings to explore post-Independence disillusionment. Karnad’s ‘Tughlaq’ critiqued Nehruvian idealism through the tragic reign of a medieval king. Tendulkar’s ‘Ghashiram Kotwal’ exposed the hypocrisy of Brahminical power.

This was not only an aesthetic movement, it was an ideological one. Theatre functioned as a social mirror that echoed the anxieties and aspirations of a new India.

Modern Indian theatre cannot be confined to a single language, form or ideology. It is shaped by vernacular traditions, folk performances, classical dramaturgy, and western influences. India, with its multiplicity of languages and theatrical lineages, cannot lay claim to a singular “national theatre”. There is no Indian equivalent of the Bolshoi or the Peking Opera. What exists is a constellation of expressions, each rooted in its region, but responding to national and global currents.

From experimental black-box productions in urban centres to open-air mythological dramas in villages, Indian theatre continues to evolve. It carries within it the multiplicity of its forms and history and the possibility of transforming it into something innovative, experimental and fresh.

To ask where Indian theatre comes from is to step into a maze of narratives. The proscenium stage, the English script and the club performance were once instruments of control. But in the hands of Indian artistes, they became means of expression and protest.

As India grapples with new fissures — religious, linguistic, social — theatre remains one of the few spaces where complexity is not erased but embraced. In its multiplicity lies its strength. In its fractures its truth.

— The writer is a theatre director