Mapping Melodrama: Global Theatrical Circuits, Parsi Theater, and the Rise of the Social

Abstract

This essay documents the transnational circulation of Victorian domestic melodrama and its adaptation to Indian theatrical practice, through the example of The Colleen Bawn, one of Dion Boucicault’s most successful works. Using the historical South Asian newspaper archives, the study traces the introduction of melodrama and modern stagecraft into India via the Lewis Company, an enterprising Anglo-Australian family troupe. The drama’s performance history and reception are charted as it traveled from Calcutta to Simla and Bombay. Its subsequent translation and reworking in the Parsi theater, in the form of Bholi Jan, the Gujarati-language version authored by K.N. Kabraji, reveal the highly productive role of melodrama in the South Asian environment. From melodrama developed the “social”, a distinct genre centered on women, the family, and the tensions of modernity. Domestic melodrama’s shape and meaning were thus recast in the new location, leaving a legacy of great importance to the evolution of modern theater and cinema in Indian languages.