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Performing the «miasma» of Indian Partition. Terror and romance in Howard Brenton’s Drawing the Line

  • Elena Anna Spandri

Originally performed at London Hampstead Theatre on 3 December 2013, Howard Brenton’s Drawing the Line dramatizes the Partition of India in two distinct nation-states after the Independence in a lush production that highlights personal conflicts and deflates the genocidal implications of the event that changed the future of the Subcontinent. The essay situates Drawing the Line in the context of Brenton’s lifelong engagement with historical theatre and reflects upon the aesthetic and political significance of the marginal role assigned to violence in the drama. It argues that the play performs a postcolonial discourse on South-Asian history, in which cosmopolitan notions of Britishness, Anglo-Indian relations, and colonial rule are interrogated through an ambiguous dramatic irony that, while deploring British ineptitude in handling the Partition process, in fact represents Partition as a colossal tangle of public and private complicities which mitigates the Raj’s responsibilities and tacitly subscribes to a consolatory determinism.

  • Keywords:
  • Howard Brenton,
  • Britishness,
  • historical theatre,
  • postcolonial discourse,
  • Partition of India,
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Elena Anna Spandri

University of Siena, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0003-2593-593X

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  13. Herman J., Playwright Howard Brenton on his new political play about Partition: Drawing the Line (audio interview), Theatre Voice, 18 December 2013.
  14. Hillman R., (Re)constructing Political Theatre: Discursive and Practical Frameworks for Theatre as an Agent for Change, «New Theatre Quarterly», 31, 4, November 2015.
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  20. Roy R., South-Asian Partition Fiction in English, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam 2010.
  21. Tickell A., «How Many Pakistans?» Questions of Space and Identity in the Writing of Partition, «Ariel: A Review of International English Literature», 32, 3, July 2001.
  22. Wolpert S., Shameful Flight. The Last Years of the British Empire in India, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2006.
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  • Publication Year: 2023
  • Pages: 115-129

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  • Publication Year: 2023

Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Performing the «miasma» of Indian Partition. Terror and romance in Howard Brenton’s Drawing the Line

Authors

Elena Anna Spandri

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0278-7.10

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2023

Copyright Information

© 2023 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY-SA 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

La violenza nel teatro contemporaneo

Book Subtitle

Lingue e linguaggi a confronto

Editors

Paola Bellomi, Carla Francellini, Maria Beatrice Lenzi, Ada Milani, Niccolò Scaffai

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

152

Publication Year

2023

Copyright Information

© 2023 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY-SA 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press, USiena Press

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0278-7

ISBN Print

979-12-215-0277-0

eISBN (pdf)

979-12-215-0278-7

eISBN (epub)

979-12-215-0279-4

Series Title

Studi di letterature moderne e comparate

Series ISSN

2975-0377

Series E-ISSN

2975-0229

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