Parsi theatrical networks in Southeast Asia: The contrary case of Burma

Abstract

Rangoon circa 1900 was known as ‘one of the best show towns in the East’. As the capital city of Burma, then ruled from Calcutta as a province of India, it was home to more Indian nationals than Burmese. In this cosmopolitan context, two vernacular arts complexes — the Parsi theatre of India and the popular zat-pwe of Burma — flourished, competed, and converged. This article documents the 55-year long engagement of Parsi theatre in Burma within the larger history of global theatrical flows in the Indian Ocean. It highlights the story of Dosabhai Hathiram, a theatre man who rooted himself in Rangoon his entire life. And it asks, why was Parsi theatre celebrated elsewhere in Southeast Asia as a vector of modernity, and yet in Burma it left scarcely a trace behind?

Querying ‘Global’ Music History: Significant Geographies between Goswami Pannalal and Queen Victoria

“…the aforementioned Krishnadhan Bandyopadhyay's primer for sitar, esraj, violin, flute and harmonium. Caribbean, the sitar in Brazil), 70 these circulations have specific histories and geographies that did not immediately resonate with Pannalal in Rajasthan, or many other musicians and scholars like him. Of course, Hindustani music, as Pannalal knew it, was hardly provincial or even contained within the Indian subcontinent, but rather the product of early-modern engagements with musicians and influences from West and Central Asia.…”

Maritime Mobility of Music Features within South and Southeast Asia

“…Theatre, opera, ballet, and circus professionals regularly stopped in Burma on their tours out of Europe, Australia, and the United States. This terrain was also frequented by artists from India, notably the Parsi theatre companies that called around the Indian Ocean" [8] .…”

“…Therefore, Parsi theatre could not survive or influence aesthetic preferences of the average urban Burmese audience. Hansen assumes that Parsi theatre troupes have shared the same stages that were used by Zat Pwe theatre practices [8] . The already established theatre halls have been the ideal place for Parsi theatre performances as Hansen writes "It was home to the Jubilee Hall, a well-appointed theatre that seated nearly 800 patrons, as well as hotel ballrooms, clubs, and cabarets.…”

“…By the second half of the nineteenth century, there has been a much larger Indian influx who could lead to watching theatre performance in Mandalay and Yangon. Thus, Baliwala continued staging theatre in 1881, 1883, 1884, and 1885 making probably different tours to Mandalay [8] .…”

Sounding the Indian Ocean: Musical Circulations in the Afro-Asiatic Seascape

“…In the final section of Reṅguner Kābýakabitā, Najir Ali related the spectacle of a Parsi Theatre production of the popular Urdu drama "Indar Sabha. " Kathryn Hansen and Rashna Darius Nicholson have recently traced the tours of Parsi Theatre companies (which began in India from 1853) around Burma, most notably the Victoria Nāṭak Maṇḍali's (Victoria Theatrical Company) season in Mandalay in 1881 (Hansen 2018;Nicholson 2017). Parsi theater had a hybrid style, incorporating elements from European, West Asian, and South Asian theater.…”