The Poetics of Theatre in Early India

Theatre discourses of early India present theatre (natya) as an integrated art form, and the poetics of theatre as an interdisciplinary system of thought and performance. Theatre functions as a composite art production comprising dance (nrtya), song (gana), instrumental music (Atodya) and enactment (abhinaya). The poetics of this theatre provides thoughts, techniques, and instrumental frameworks for performance, based on an interdisciplinary reflection upon space, body, mind, motion, sound, memory, consciousness and theatre in relation to the other disciplines of knowledge. This book attempts to examine the poetics of theatre in early India by interpreting a system of theatre and performance along several themes such as theatre’s place in the premodern interdisciplinary knowledge systems, theatre space and architecture, cognition and emotion, performance, experience and consciousness, human and social behaviour, and music.