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Theatre, activism, subjectivity

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In modern times of political confusion, when Leftist agendas and struggles often collapse or become appropriated by Right, this book stress the necessity of recovering the Leftist ethos of solidari...
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  • 20 January 2026
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Through the lens of performance and politics, this collection zooms in on the context-specific dimensions, analogies, and micro-histories of the Left to better understand the larger picture. It proposes a search for the Left not from totalising Leftist ideological positions and partisan politics but from ethical dimensions through smaller-scale Left-leaning struggles; not from the political to the aesthetic, but from the potentiality of art to offer new political imagination and critique; not from the individual subordinated to the collective, but from the dialectics of subjectivity and collectivity. This is not an attempt at a sweeping global overview of Leftist cultures either, but a collection that brings together culture-specific and comparative perspectives. This book searches for fragments of and on the Left, past and present, through which to rethink and patch a fragmented world.
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Price: £30.00
Pages: 320
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Series: Theatre: Theory – Practice – Performance
Publication Date: 20 January 2026
ISBN: 9781526195500
Format: Paperback
BISACs:

PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / History & Criticism, Theatre studies, PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / General, PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / Direction & Production, Theatre direction and production, Political control and freedoms

REVIEWS Icon

Forward - Partha Chatterjee
Introduction: Searching for the Left in a Fragmented World - Silvija Jestrovic & Bishnupriya Dutt

Part I: Activism
1 Performing the Constitution as an insurgent document - Nivedita Menon
2 Revolution: Like. Share. Subscribe - Dragan Todorovic
3 The ‘Hunger Artists’: Hunger protests, prisons and insurgent citizenship - Anupama Roy and Ujjwal Kumar Singh
4 Of Quiet Resistance: Shy Radicals, divergent world-making and the poetics of statecraft - Anika Marschall

Part II: Theatre
5 Acting Politically: Making performance in the eye of history - Adrian Kear
6 Theatre of the streets—of the working class: strikes, protests, and democratization of life - Bishnupriya Dutt
7 The Cheviot and its Legacies: Dramaturgies of the Left in Scottish Theatre - Trish Reid
8 Between the Right and the Left: Staging political, emotional and social polarizations on Canadian stage - Yana Meerzon
9 The Indiscreet Charm of Left nostalgia: Reeking redolence in the contemporary - Ameet Parameswaran
10 Staging Revolution: Utpal Dutt’s Kallol (1965) and the Question of ‘Spectacular’ Aesthetics in Calcutta’s Leftist Theatre Practice - Trina Neelina Banerjee
11 Love in the time of revolution: Exploring political theatre of Utpal Dutt - Mallarika Sinha Roy

Part III: Subjectivity
12 Revolutionary intimacies: Friendship, love, and theatre - Silvija Jestrovic
13 The fraught act of speaking for / about the communist women - Urmimala Sarkar Munsi
14 One always fails to speak of the things one loves: Memories of border crossings - Shirin M Rai
15 Why I am still a Socialist - Janelle Reinelt