2018/01/16 by Kathryn Hansen · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography #Asian Studies and History #Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0022463417000662
crossref issued 2018/01/16 · crossref published 2018/01/16 · crossref published-online 2018/01/16 · openalex publication_date 2018/01/16 · crossref created 2018/01/18 · crossref published-print 2018/02/01 · crossref deposited 2022/08/12 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/28 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
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?