THEATRE AND DEMOCRACY

This collection of essays on democracy in performance is timely. It comes at a time when the very basis of the notion of democracy has been evacuated of its original premise on the will of the individual by many political systems and trans-national enterprises. In twenty-first century political theory and world politics in practice, democracy has become both an excuse for and an aim of a neo-liberal agenda for the free-flow of global capital. Nations act as businesses in competition with one another and those who refuse to compete in that market are subject to enforcement. The enforcement of democracy through invasion, the dismantling and the reorganization of political systems and economies, ensures that a notion of ‘democracy’ obtains for the perpetuation of that global capital. Democracy in our age, though predicated on the agency of the individual, actually means the subjection of the individual to the simulation of democracy. ‘Pure’ democracy is reformulated into an ‘organized’ one and on the world stage that transforms into a project of universalism. That universalism was once the project of Empire, and is now the project of global capitalism. Democracy, thus, could be said to be the greatest of contemporary political performances.

Ravi Chaturvedi, currently Visiting Professor at the Department of Theatre & Film Studies, Chung-Ang University at Seoul (Republic of Korea), has been formerly Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Dramatics, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur. Besides the founder president of Indian Society for Theatre Research, he has also been the executive member of International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR) for eight years. His publications include the “World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre” and the recently edited book “Ethnicity and Identity: Global Performance.” He is also on the Editorial Board of the “Theatre Research International, ” published by Cambridge University Press. He organized the first conference of IFTR in Asia in 2003 at Jaipur. He is also a professional theatre director.