This volume is an edited collection of critical essays on British Asian theatre. It includes contributions from a number of researchers who have been active in the field for a substantial period of time.

This title is complemented by British South Asian Theatres: A Documented History by the same authors, also available from University of Exeter Press.

Graham Ley is Professor Emeritus of Drama and Theory at the University of Exeter.

He has taught drama in the Universities of London and Auckland as well as Exeter, and has directed and translated for the theatre. He was dramaturg to John Barton in Tantalus directed by Peter Hall (Denver USA, 2000, UK, 2001).
His particular interests lie in comparative performance theory, dramaturgy, performance in the ancient Greek theatre, and British Asian theatre. He held a Leverhulme Fellowship in 2000-2001, and was the award-holder for an AHRC-funded research project on the history of British Asian Theatre, active from October 2004 to March 2009.
In July 2010 he was invited to give a keynote on British Asian Theatre at the conference Theater und Migration at the Comedia Theatre in Cologne. In January 2013 he was invited to contribute to one of a series of causeries at the Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, as part of the activity surrounding the preparation of Alexandre Singh's work, The Humans. In September 2014 he was asked to compile the timeline on the history of British Asian theatre production in London for the programme of the London revival of East Is East, at the Trafalgar Studios which opened in October.
His books include A Short Introduction to the Ancient Greek Theater (2nd edition, 2006) and The Theatricality of Greek Tragedy (2007). In 2014 he published Ancient Greek and Contemporary Performance: Collected Essays and Acting Greek Tragedy, a workshop-approach with an associated website at actinggreektragedy.com

List of Illustrations Contributors

Introduction

1. British Asian Theatre: the Long Road to Now, and the Barriers in-between, Naseem Khan

2. Images on Stage: a Historical Survey of South Asians in British Theatre before 1975, Colin Chambers

3. Bridging Divides: the Emergence of Bilingual Theatre in Tower Hamlets in the 1980s, Susan Croft

4. Experiments in Theatre from the Margins: Text, Performance and New Writers, Rukhsana Ahmad

5. Dramatising Refuge(e)s: Rukhsana Ahmad's Song for a Sanctuary and Tanika Gupta's Sanctuary, Christiane Schlote

6. Directing Storytelling Performance and Storytelling Theatre, Chris Banfield

7. Engaging the Audience: a Comparative Analysis of Developmental Strategies in Birmingham and Leicester since the 1990s, Claire Cochrane

8. Patriarchy and Its Discontents: the 'Kitchen-Sink Drama' of Tamasha Theatre Company, Victoria Sams

9. The Marketing of Commercial and Subsidised Theatre to British Asian Audiences: Tamasha's Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and a Funeral (1998 and 2001) and Bombay Dreams (2002), Suman Bhuchar

10. Mixing with the Mainstream: Transgressing the Identity of Place, Jerri Daboo

11. Between Page and Stage: Meera Syal in British Asian Culture, Giovanna Buonanno

12. Imagine, Indiaah ... on the British Stage: Exploring Tara's 'Binglish' and Tamasha's Brechtian Approaches, Chandrika Patel

13. British Asian Live Art: motiroti, Stephen Hodge

14. On the Making of Mr Quiver, Rajni Shah

Notes

Bibliography

Index