Staging British South Asian Culture: Bollywood and Bhangra in British Theatre [1 ed.] 1138677159, 9781138677159

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STAGING BRITISH SOUTH ASIAN CULTURE

Staging British South Asian Culture: Bollywood and Bhangra in British Theatre looks afresh at the popularity of using forms and aesthetics from Bollywood films and Bhangra music and dance on the British stage. Examining a range of productions from 1998 to 2016, Jerri Daboo reconsiders the centrality of Bollywood and Bhangra in theatre made for or about British South Asian communities. Addressing rarely discussed theatre companies such as Rifco Arts, as well as West End musicals, and phenomena such as the emergence of large-scale Bollywood revue performances, this volume goes some way towards remedying the lack of critical discourse around British South Asian theatre and culture. A timely contribution to this growing field, Staging British South Asian Culture is essential reading for any scholar or student interested in exploring the highly contested questions of identity and representation for British South Asian communities. Jerri Daboo is Associate Professor of Performance in the Department of Drama at the University of Exeter. Her research explores performance and culture, particularly in the British South Asian communities.

STAGING BRITISH SOUTH ASIAN CULTURE Bollywood and Bhangra in British Theatre

Jerri Daboo

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Jerri Daboo The right of Jerri Daboo to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-​1-​138-​67714-​2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​138-​67715-​9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​315-​55972-​8 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Out of House Publishing

CONTENTS

List of illustrations Acknowledgements 1 Bollywood, Bhangra and being British

vi viii 1

2 Mapping migration: transnational formations of diaspora

33

3 Bollywood and/​as musical theatre

65

4 Bollywood on stage: transadaptation and ‘Bollywoodisation’

90

5 Bending Bhangra: Rifco Arts and Bend It Like Beckham: the musical Conclusion Bibliography Filmiography Index

126 166 171 179 180

ILLUSTRATIONS

over image: Britain’s Got Bhangra. Photograph by David Fisher, C courtesy of Rifco Arts 1.1 The Great Indian Dancers and Punjab Dancers 1.2 Channi Singh from Alaap, and Kumar and Dhami from Heera, performing in a Daytimer concert 2.1 Himalaya Palace Cinema, Southall 2.2 Scene from The Deranged Marriage 3.1 Scene of the families from Fourteen Songs,Two Weddings and a Funeral 3.2 Shobu Kapoor as Bhagwanti in Fourteen Songs,Two Weddings and a Funeral 3.3 ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’ from Bombay Dreams 3.4 ‘Shakalaka Baby’ from Bombay Dreams 4.1 Caroline Kilpatrick as Frosine and Antony Bunsee as Harjinder in Kanjoos 4.2 Publicity image for Tamasha’s Wuthering Heights 4.3 Youkti Patel as Shakuntala and Pushpinder Chani as Krishnan in Wuthering Heights 4.4 Contrasting styles of dance and costume in Wah! Wah! Girls 4.5 Sam Kordbacher as Sir Rattan in Dick Whittington Goes Bollywood 4.6 Publicity material for Dick Whittington Goes Bollywood 4.7 Sohm Kapila as Zak in Bollywood Jack 4.8 Ralph Birtwell as Dame Mrs Moowallah, and Shala Nyx as Moomoo the cow in Bollywood Jack 4.9 Front curtain from The Merchants of Bollywood 5.1 The ‘Field Song’ in Britain’s Got Bhangra

27 29 36 42 76 79 85 86 97 99 100 111 119 119 120 121 122 147

Illustrations  vii

5 .2 The ‘Aunty’ figures in Britain’s Got Bhangra 5.3 1980s style of costume and performance, and contemporary hip hop-​influenced style, in Britain’s Got Bhangra 5.4 Group picture from Britain’s Got Bhangra 5.5 Bhangra rhythm, which is played with a swing, showing the accent on the last and first beats of the bar 5.6 Shahid Abbas Khan, with the company, singing ‘UB2’, in Bend It Like Beckham: the musical 5.7 The engagement dance scene in Bend It Like Beckham: the musical C.1 Joe Sellman-​Leava in Labels

149 150 151 157 159 162 169

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to offer many thanks to Suman Bhuchar, Jatinder Verma, Shelby Williams and Kuljit Bhamra who have given interviews for my research for this book, as well as many other artists and practitioners who gave interviews and material for previous research projects, including Kristine Landon-​Smith, Sudha Bhuchar, Pravesh Kumar, Shakila Maan, Ammy Phull, Deepak Khazanchi, Shanawar Chaudhry, Ravi Jain, Channi Singh and Harbinder Singh. Thank you also to Tara Arts, Tamasha and Rifco for allowing me access to their archives, and special mention to Alexandra Wyatt, Valerie Synmoie and Gurpreet Braich in each company respectively for their help. Particular thanks to Kuljit Bhamra for all his assistance and thoughts over the past eight years. Thanks also to the many academic colleagues who have offered advice and support throughout the process, particularly to all those in the Department of Drama at the University of Exeter. Special thanks to Professor Graham Ley for his endless advice and encouragement, as well as reading drafts and providing the most helpful feedback, and without whose persistence, hard work and dedication to the history of British South Asian theatre, this book would not have been possible. Thanks also to my PhD students, and others in the Department, whose work and thinking have also been of value in the book, particularly Rebecca Savory Fuller, Mrunal Chavda, Sharanya Murali and Sabina Sweta Sen. Thank you to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for funding both the British Asian Theatre project and the Southall Story project, which has led to the work in this book.Thanks also to the Society for Theatre Research for awarding me the Stephen Joseph Award to assist with publication. Thanks to Kate Edwards and others at Routledge for the production of the book. This book is dedicated to all the British South Asian artists and companies who have worked so hard and creatively to have their voices heard.

1 BOLLYWOOD, BHANGRA AND BEING BRITISH

Part I: Introduction This book is an investigation into a selection of theatre productions made by or about South Asians in Britain.The particular focus of the discussion of these productions is the inclusion of elements adapted from Bollywood and Bhangra as forms of culture that have migrated from the ‘homeland’ of India to the new ‘home’ of Britain, to question how this shapes identification and representation in multiple, complex and often contradictory ways.Theatre offers a means to examine the changes in both the South Asian communities that inhabit the diaspora, and in Britain itself as a result of migration. Michael Pearce, writing on Black British theatre, explains that: [b]‌lack British theatre is a barometer for a changing Britain. It tracks this evolving landscape through its exploration of themes of migration, race, belonging and nation. It is also a model for understanding the changes occurring in our rapidly globalising world. (Pearce, 2017: i) The same can be said for British South Asian theatre, with issues of migration and belonging being key in the construction of cultural representations and negotiation of the identities of both ‘Asian’ and ‘British’. However, this book also examines the transnational cultural flows between Britain and the Indian subcontinent, and in so doing, the productions track changes not only in Britain, but also in a rapidly transforming India, as well as the relationship between the two. Thus, the book offers an interrogation of the shifting constructions of diaspora through the theatre productions, and becomes an investigation of identity, representation, belonging and conflicting ideologies in the creation of ‘home’, as well as the continued influences and connections from and with the ‘homeland’ of the Indian subcontinent.

2  Bollywood, Bhangra and being British

The productions examined in the book were made in the period from 1998 to 2016, with the main focus being on productions in the new millennium from 2002 onwards. This allows for an investigation of the changing face of Britain from the time of Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’ government beginning in 1997, through both 9/​11 and 7/​7, and the election of the Tory Government under David Cameron and subsequently Theresa May, through to the referendum that resulted in the decision for the UK to leave the EU in 2016. This book investigates the way in which theatre productions made by or about South Asians reflect, resist or are deliberately oblivious to shifting discourses and representations during this period. The examination of productions in the new millennium is framed by two large-​scale West End musicals discussed in the book: Bombay Dreams (2002) and Bend It Like Beckham: the musical (2015). The differences between them mark the changes in the period, with the first offering a representation of a fetishised India portrayed through Bollywood film conventions, and the second that of a multicultural London with hybridised identities and conflicts amongst second-​generation South Asians, trying to fulfil the migrant dream of integration and success, complete with Bhangra dance fused with hip hop. In between these are a number of theatre productions discussed in the book which incorporate Bollywood and/​or Bhangra in their form and aesthetics, using music and dance in various ways to present key diasporic concerns of the relationship between India and Britain, past and present, ‘homeland’ and home, tradition and modernity. Though the main focus of the book is from 2002 to 2016, it is also important to explore the period immediately before this from the 1990s to see how changes in both India and the UK influenced the development of the theatre discussed. In India, the process of economic liberalisation from 1991 led to a changing view of ‘modern’ or ‘new’ India and Indian-​ness, which resulted in new types of Bollywood films being produced to reflect this. The focus became on the emerging young, urban, middle class with increasing disposable income, as well as on the Non-​Resident Indian (NRI) communities, and representing India as a modern, shining land with increased wealth and opportunities internally, as well as being globalised and outwardly facing.This was reflected in clothing brands, technology, particularly IT, and the desire to be perceived as a major player in global economics.The other side to this was an increasing conservatism that was reacting to the ‘newness’ which threatened established traditions and identities, with the exposure to and infiltration from the outside world posing a risk to the morality of the nation and its young people. As Chakravorty explains: The present condition is articulated in the contradictory mission of globalizing India advocated through narratives of accelerated change, industrialization, modernization and democratization, while ancestral homeland, sacred places and preservation of the environment from the onslaught of capitalist development keep it entrenched in localized politics. In this momentum of change towards an ‘India Shining,’ high and low, classical and folk, Indian and Western cultural forms absorb, influence, co-​opt, plagiarize and cannibalize one another. (Chakravorty, 2009: 211)

Bollywood, Bhangra and being British  3

This contradiction was seen in the development of new Bollywood ‘family’ films which had a more global focus, reaching out to the NRI communities, showing an Indian middle class that had the money and expectations of a capitalist consumerist culture that looked outside India, placed along with a focus on the family and traditional values, where the modern young woman is allowed a certain increased amount of freedom, as long as ultimately she settles down into a traditional married life. One of the first of this new type of film which broke the mould and influenced a shift in the Bollywood style was Hum Aapke Hain Koun …! (Who Am I To You), released in 1994, which became a huge hit not just in India where it was the first film to exceed INR 1 billion in gross box office takings, but also around the world, particularly with NRI communities, and made GBP 38 million globally. It was also the film that was seen by Kristine Landon-​Smith and Sudha Bhuchar, then artistic directors of Tamasha Theatre Company in London, and led to them making a theatrical adaptation of the film in 1998, restaged in 2001, entitled Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and a Funeral. This production was seen by Andrew Lloyd Webber and A. R. Rahman shortly before they embarked on creating Bombay Dreams. Therefore, the shift in cultural representation in films in India had a direct effect on the production of South Asian theatre in Britain, and the flows between India and the UK and how this has affected film and theatre in both countries will be examined in the productions. While these changes were happening in India, a major shift in the UK came in 1997 with the election of Tony Blair’s New Labour party, ending 18 years of Tory government. With Blair came ‘Cool Britannia’, and an ideology of a happily integrated multicultural Britain, idolising a hybrid appropriation of cultures resulting in the ‘Asian Kool’ of the late 1990s/​early 2000s, and seen particularly in the ‘Indian Summer’ of 2002, of which Bombay Dreams was a part.This new articulation of a convivial multicultural nation was soon to be confronted with 9/​11, followed by 7/​7, and a growing discourse of fear, anger and racial tension towards Muslims in particular. This discourse increasingly turned towards ‘immigrants’ as a whole being blamed for problems with British society, particularly since the election of the Tory government led by David Cameron in 2010 following the beginning of the global economic crisis. More recently, the referenda on Scottish independence and leaving the EU have shown a country divided, with both an increased rhetoric of hatred towards ‘foreigners’ who are polluting what it means to be British, and a desire to resist this and show that Britain is still a well-​integrated multicultural society and ‘open for business’ to the rest of the world. Bend It Like Beckham: the musical encompasses the contradictions of these turbulent 13 years. It is based on the film of the same name which was shot and set in the summer of 2001, portrayed as a golden time of multicultural conviviality and ‘girl power’ as well as sunshine and fun, encapsulated in the joyful singing of ‘Feeling hot, hot, hot’ over the end credits. The filming took place just a few short weeks before 9/​11, and certainly feels like a period piece seeing it in 2015 as a result. The creative team behind the stage musical version decided to set it in that original time period of the summer of 2001; it would not have worked logically with the narrative otherwise. Therefore,

4  Bollywood, Bhangra and being British

to see the musical on stage both representing a ‘modern’ London, but set in a time that seems alien to the reality of the country today, offers a means to examine these contradictions in questioning what being ‘British’ means, and how theatre reflects, constitutes or resists this.

Why Bollywood and Bhangra? The decision to focus this book on productions that incorporate Bollywood and Bhangra is in order to examine complex and contradictory questions about representation and identification of and with the British South Asian diasporic communities on stage. Both Bollywood and Bhangra, and their histories in Britain and transnational links with India, will be discussed in Part II of this chapter to offer an introduction to their histories and relevant aspects for this book.The use of ‘popular’ forms of cultural practices of film, music and dance allows for an interrogation of the formation of diasporic representations from both within and outside the communities. In speaking about her perception of British South Asian theatre productions, Indian theatre practitioner, scholar and former Director of the National School of Drama in Delhi, Anuradha Kapur, declared, ‘If it has a Bollywood twist, it’s fine. If it doesn’t have a Bollywood twist, it’s not Indian’ (Kapur, 2008). This indicates that there can be a very simplistic equation in the UK: India = Bollywood, which can lead to an expectation from the hegemonic ideology of the mainstream theatre audience and industry that if there is something on stage that comes under the heading of Asian/​Indian, then this must mean an incorporation and presentation of Bollywood. Therefore, the performance will be a piece of colourful entertainment with high-​energy song and dance numbers wrapped in an exotic masala-​flavoured theatrical experience: not too demanding, not really political and full of comedy and romance. This expectation can also be imposed by funding organisations and theatre institutions, which likewise perceive that if a performance is to be supported or programmed under the ‘British Asian’ heading, then it must display the form and aesthetics that will define it as such from their perspective. These pressures of funding and marketing in turn can shape the types of productions made by practitioners, resulting in them creating a form of populist performance that seeks to entertain within these limitations. An attempt to transgress this in order to offer a different kind of narrative or aesthetic may be viewed with mistrust and disavowal: a well-​ respected South Asian dance choreographer reported to me that she was told by an Arts Council advisor that her new contemporary piece was not ‘Indian’ enough in their opinion, and therefore would struggle to be programmed with that label of identity, and questioned if it therefore should be funded through a dedicated Black and Minority Ethnic funding strategy. However, alongside this residual imperialist discourse of an outwardly enforced representation of ‘Asian-​ness’, is the popularity and significance of Bollywood from within the South Asian communities in Britain. Films from the Indian subcontinent have played a very significant role in the creation of ‘home’ in the diaspora, forming an integral part of the cultural landscape and identification.

Bollywood, Bhangra and being British  5

This is both a nostalgic looking back to the ‘homeland’ and past life before migration, as well as a means to forge a distinct identity in the new ‘home’. In the movement from first to second and subsequent generations, Bollywood has remained a stable marker of identification, even if the form and expression has changed. Therefore, the placing of Bollywood on stage is itself a transgression of the inherent ‘whiteness’ usually seen in mainstream theatre, and leads to an identification with members of the South Asian communities which might also bring them into a theatre building that would otherwise feel alien to them. The pleasure of familiarity and recognition in seeing a song and dance number from a favourite film re-​enacted on stage offers a significant intervention into the dominant discourse of ‘British theatre’, and adds a conflicting ambivalent layer to the use of Bollywood as being one of homogenising imperialist imposition. The hegemonic ‘whiteness’ that is usually seen on the British stage has been challenged and transgressed by the theatre productions to be discussed which were made by or about South Asians. However, although lack of visibility is clearly important to address, it is also vital to question what that visibility is when it is there, and who it is that is deciding and defining what the representation of South Asians is to themselves and others. The term ‘Bollywood’ is problematic in being a homogenising of the films that have been produced in the Indian subcontinent, and by extension, the communities themselves and their cultural practices. This is also, of course, embodied in the term ‘Asian’, which is used to encompass and unify a vast number of individuals from different nations, regions, ethnicities, religions, languages and patterns of migration and settlement. These labels highlight the problem in Britain where ‘Asian’ tends to suggest those from the Indian subcontinent, thereby excluding others, and also often to mean specifically ‘Indian’, particularly in terms of culture and performance. This is partly to do with the complex histories of empire and colonialism that are intertwined with language and discourse, and still shape ideology and representation. The terms ‘Bollywood’ and ‘Asian’ are ones that need interrogating to understand how they have been assimilated into discourse and practice within the cultural life of this country, and by extension, how the term ‘British’ itself both necessitates and resists change. With Bollywood playing such an important part in the culture and representation of British South Asians, it is interesting that there has not been much focus on this within academic studies of theatre in Britain. While there has been some analysis of the use of Bollywood in specific productions, this has not been expanded upon fully to engage with fields of cultural studies and transnationalism in the way this book intends. In addition, a major omission has been a study of the use of Bhangra on stage, and in the culture of South Asian communities. Bhangra itself can be seen as a British (re)invention based on the traditional song and dance forms originating in rural Punjab. The way that the music and dance were developed and transformed by the first and second generations of South Asians in Britain has been charted by scholars in cultural studies and sociology, but almost no attention has been given to how this is incorporated into theatre productions. This also leads to

6  Bollywood, Bhangra and being British

questioning the homogenising nature of the term ‘Asian’ as indicated previously, and asking if the influence of a perceived Punjabi sensibility has been instrumental in the development of the representation of British South Asian-​ness in popular culture and the media. This examination of community differences and potential hierarchies of representation has again not been fully addressed in previous studies of theatre. Elements of Bhangra have also been incorporated into Bollywood music and dance in India and by transnational extension in the diaspora, however, the particular form of Bhangra is still used in its own right separately from Bollywood in productions on stage, as well as in festivals and community events, to produce and reinforce a distinctive Punjabi (often also specifically Sikh) identity and representation. Hence this book examines both Bollywood and Bhangra, and their use on the British stage, in their amalgamation and differences. Additionally, both are composite or hybrid forms which have developed in very different ways over time and place, and hence this raises and addresses important areas for debate around tradition, adaptation and authenticity which are also key in examining the nature of diasporic communities. Due to the incorporation of Bhangra forms into Bollywood dance, when I use the term ‘Bollywood’ in this book I am also referring to Bhangra as used in Bollywood song and dance routines, and when using the term ‘Bhangra’, this refers to the form of Bhangra as separate and distinct from Bollywood. Bollywood and Bhangra, then, offer different and often contradictory meanings and forms of representation and identification for those from within the South Asian communities, and those outside them.This also creates different meanings and interpretations of the stage performances for different audiences, whether South Asian or otherwise; the theatre practitioners and companies engaged with making them; as well as the funding organisations and theatre institutions involved. In order to question the issues of wider representation, the selection of performances to be discussed in this book are focused on those that may be considered to be ‘mainstream’, whether due to the venues they were performed in; the profile of the companies or writers; the funding from commercial or public bodies; or the themes and aesthetics used.There are essentially two types of productions discussed: the first are those made by theatre companies and performed in mid-​to large-​scale venues in regions across the country. These companies are identified as being ‘Asian-​led’, are funded by the Arts Council, and have a national profile (Tara Arts, Tamasha and Rifco). The exception to this is Wah! Wah! Girls, co-​produced by Kneehigh theatre company with Sadler’s Wells and Theatre Royal Stratford East, in association with Hall for Cornwall, but written by established British Asian playwright Tanika Gupta. The other type of performances addressed are highly commercial musical theatre enterprises put on in London’s West End (Bombay Dreams and Bend It Like Beckham: the musical). This is not to deny the importance of other professional theatre plays and productions that have taken place over the past 40 years, nor the significance and wealth of South Asian community and language theatres1 within Britain. However, the focus on ‘mainstream’ productions is to question how these

Bollywood, Bhangra and being British  7

higher-​profile shows create discourse at a national level, and deal with funding and marketing, which also shapes identity. In addition, the productions examined mainly fall under the label of ‘popular’ theatre due to the themes and incorporation of forms and aesthetics from Bollywood and Bhangra, particularly in order to make them appeal to a wider South Asian audience. There is currently a debate about the growth of this type of ‘popular’ theatre under the ‘British South Asian’ label, and why this might be occurring in relation to shifting representations of the communities, what theatre institutions feel is ‘safe’ to put on, and also for drawing in a larger South Asian audience. There has been an increased conflation between ideas of the ‘popular’ and ‘populist’ in politics and the arts in recent decades, which is potentially problematic in relation to theatre. There is a distinction between theatre that uses popular forms or is for a wider audience rather than one that may be considered ‘elite’, and the political notion of ‘populist’ that seeks to highlight the division between the ‘elite’ and ‘the people’ through the use of forms of language and representation that are perceived to be ‘of the people’. In this way, there is certainly a potential connection between how ‘popular’ and ‘populist’ can become part of the same theatrical production, however, a performance can use ‘popular’ forms without necessarily being ‘populist’. As Yanis Varoufakis succinctly states, ‘The Sun and William Shakespeare are both popular but only one of the two is populist’ (Varoufakis, 2016). The use of popular forms in British South Asian theatre is further complicated due to the experience and expectations of the South Asian communities particularly in relation to the place of ‘the arts’ in their lives. Jatinder Verma, Artistic Director of Tara Arts, suggests that there is a shift in the work produced by Tara towards a more popular, indeed perhaps populist, turn in the past decade, in part due to wider political circumstances, and needing to find ways to address this: In times of war, in times of economic stagnation, people need hope, audiences need hope, and hope unfortunately doesn’t come from Beckett, it comes from something more celebratory. Therefore one has to see the popular as also potentially a provocation, an incision into the cultural life of society. If I look specifically at Asians, certainly Asians in Britain, then I would say that what we have inherited in our DNA if you like, is the idea of art as entertainment.The value of the arts is purely seen in commercial and popular terms, in entertainment terms. Not in terms of making a contribution to the cultural life of the country, making an intervention into the kinds of stories that are being told. So the popular it would seem to me for Asians is still a very strong idea, hence one thinks of Bollywood. (Verma, 2017) This turn towards popular forms such as Bollywood and Bhangra could in that sense be seen as a populist approach in order to bring South Asian audiences to the theatre to be entertained. However, Verma goes on to state that this use of

8  Bollywood, Bhangra and being British

the popular can be a means to then engage audiences with other issues that move beyond entertainment, and this is why he chooses to work with the forms: So it seems to me that the challenge for artists such as ourselves is to ask, can you engage with the popular without necessarily sacrificing what you also want to do, which is to comment on society? And I think it is possible. (Verma, ibid.) This indicates an interesting paradox in the idea and use of the ‘popular’, and why the focus on popular forms in performance is very important to address today. This is becoming increasingly acknowledged within academia, where there can be a privileging of discussion on what might be considered to be ‘elitist’ theatre previously, reinforcing the division between ‘popular’ and ‘high’ or ‘elitist’ culture, often at the heart of debates on theatre in Britain. However, as is seen in the work of the South Asian productions discussed in this book, there can be an overlap between these, and companies such as Tara and Tamasha move freely between them, to the point where the distinction is often blurred. Bollywood and Bhangra may be used in a play that is also addressing serious contemporary themes as Verma suggests, but the significance of the perception of the ‘popular’, and the association of the use of comedy, romance, song and dance to produce a piece that is primarily for entertainment, and the ways that this shapes representations of South Asian communities, is important to consider when addressing the work produced by South Asian artists, as well as representations about South Asians in mainstream theatre and media.

Methods and themes In order to address questions of representation and identity through the theatre productions, the book will use an interdisciplinary framework drawing on aspects of performance studies and cultural studies, along with elements from history, postcolonial theory, transnationalism and sociology. Looking at diaspora creates the need for thinking that moves beyond the postcolonial relationship between coloniser and colonised, and acknowledges a more transnational view where flows of people, economies, goods and culture move along many routes, not just between Britain and India.The importance of globalisation and neo-​liberalism in producing capitalist forces that shape cultural and identity formation is also vital to take into account. In addition, moving beyond the first generation who experienced the process of migration, diasporic communities invoke the need to look at ways in which second and subsequent generations have established a sense of ‘home’ that is not necessarily looking nostalgically backwards to an imagined homeland. Thus, the politics of place become significant in examining the formations of culture, and diaspora studies, drawing on the political ideas from postcolonialism, modes of representation and visibility in popular culture and media from cultural studies, and the flow of people and cultures from transnational studies offers an appropriate frame to consider how place, culture and identity are operating in the productions. Since issues

Bollywood, Bhangra and being British  9

of funding, institutions, government policies and discourse are also vital, aspects of cultural materialism will be incorporated. The field of performance studies will be used as the main way to analyse the performances using performance and textual analysis, as well as related publicity and funding material, company and practitioner histories and a number of interviews with theatre practitioners. Since the productions incorporate Bollywood and Bhangra, the analysis will focus on music and dance, as well as text. The placing of Bollywood on stage requires consideration of issues of adaptation, intertextuality and transmediality, particularly with the transference of a sequence from a film being recreated in the theatre. The element of ‘liveness’, of lived experience and immediacy of presence that is possible in theatre performance in contrast to the mediated experience of film, invites ways of looking at why audiences would want to see the performance of a song from a film reproduced on the stage, and the sense of pleasure and identification that this brings. South Asian audiences have been generally more familiar with going to the cinema or watching films at home rather than going to the theatre, and the experience of seeing actors live on the stage, and especially singing themselves when audiences are used to characters in Bollywood films miming to playback singers, creates a very different level of engagement with the representation of not just the culture, but also the character and narrative of the play. One South Asian audience member at the National Theatre’s 2007 production of Ayub Khan-​Din’s play Rafta, Rafta … had never been to the theatre before, and was there in part due to the audience development work undertaken by Hardish Virk, which is examined in the book. During the interval, she turned to me and stated, ‘It’s not like watching a film, is it. It’s like it’s really happening in front of you, and you can’t sit back from it’. The liveness of theatre, the physical presence of the characters, situations and music and dance on stage bring a different kind of engagement to the diasporic consciousness. While this can offer new possibilities for exploring issues, this very ‘liveness’ can also lead to some audience members having a greater concern for what is seen on stage as being a ‘correct’ representation, one that is approved of, and not threatening the core values and morality of the individual and community. This can place pressures on theatre-​makers, programmers and funders to ensure that the productions are not too confrontational in their themes and style, which is discussed in the analysis of the performances in the book. Other key themes that will run through the chapters draw on ideas from diaspora studies. One major theme is that of tradition versus modernity. This is seen in the changing themes in the films themselves that have migrated from India, and then translated into issues facing different generations of diasporic communities in Britain. It also relates to the performance of the forms of Bollywood and Bhangra, which become sites of contestation about the ‘authenticity’ of a ‘traditional’ form as opposed to the ‘contamination’ of the form being adapted or fused with other forms by the younger generation. The theme of inter-​generational conflict, so prevalent in British South Asian plays, reflects this contestation in the negotiation between the first generation wanting to hold on to the traditional ways from the ‘homeland’,

10  Bollywood, Bhangra and being British

in conflict with the second and third generations wanting to adapt to the new and modern ways of being ‘at home’ in the diaspora. This idea of inter-​generational conflict is one of what I label the ‘four markers of identity’, outlined in Chapter 2, which are based in the residual discourses of older views from anthropology that offer racialised models of ‘community’ that are still used today in discourse about South Asians in Britain. The trope of tradition versus modernity is also part of this model, and the book will question whether the plays are conforming to, or even trapped within, these models and markers which have been imposed from outside as the way in which South Asian communities are represented. Intersectionality is another major consideration, and the plays show differing attitudes towards issues of class, gender and sexuality, as well as ethnicity, religion, caste, age and nationality. The representation of women is a particular concern in the book. The discussion of the development of Indian cinema in this chapter demonstrates how women became the embodiment of the morality of the nation, and shifting representations of women in the films can be charted through the changing political discourses of India becoming and asserting itself as a nation. The conflicting representations of women can also be seen in the plays, with a contestation between images of sexualisation and purity or modesty often at the heart of a character. This is bound up in the contradictory idea of the ‘modern girl’, particularly seen in the ‘family’ films from the 1990s, where a young woman is allowed to be ‘modern’ in dress and outlook, but must also retain ‘traditional’ values of honour and devotion to family and community. In contrast to this, the figure of the mujra, the dancing courtesan, found in Indian historical film epics such as Pakeezah, Umrao Jaan, Mughal-​E-​Azam and Devdas has also been transported onto the British stage in modern reworkings of dancing women in sex clubs in the UK. The transference of the woman as the figure embodying contradictory discourses of the morality of the family, community and nation from India to the UK is also seen in another ‘marker of identity’, that of the arranged marriage, which is often at the centre of the plot of many British South Asian plays. The trope of the arranged marriage allows for discussion of inter-​generational conflict and the place of women in modern society, as well as creating the spectacle of the ubiquitous wedding scene and associated ceremonies. Another significant feature of the British South Asian theatre productions is that of humour and comedy. This can lead to some very ambivalent, or rather multivalent, representations of characters and situations. Humour has the ability to subvert norms and established views, and also to create new kinds of language and cultural references in the diaspora. The development of a particularly British South Asian humour and use of comedy is examined in Chapter 2 through aspects derived from Bollywood films, as well as the theatre and comedy performances in Britain in the 1980s, and high-​profile television programmes such as Goodness Gracious Me in the late 1990s. While this use of comedy and humour can offer a means to represent South Asians back to themselves in an enjoyable and subversive way, it can also potentially lead to a reinforcing of the very racialised stereotypes that were created by the dominant discourse. The figure of the Aunty in particular becomes

Bollywood, Bhangra and being British  11

a source of fun in some of the productions discussed, and yet can also be the figure of the ‘joker’, able to comment on the action and characters in a transgressive way because of her position of alterity she holds within the play and the communities. Within the plays, this multivalent use of humour and comedy to entertain, along with the often safe portrayal and enjoyment of Bollywood forms and aesthetics, can lead to the representation of what I term multicultural ‘conviviality’. This is a term developed from differing approaches to the term ‘conviviality’ by Paul Gilroy and Sarita Malik, discussed in the next chapter. I adapt Gilroy’s somewhat utopian view to instead become closer to Malik’s critique of portrayals through comedy of an idealised, convivial, multicultural society that fits in with Blair’s vision of a happy, integrated multicultural nation, discussed earlier. The convivial South Asian is placed in the framework of the play that makes them unthreatening, non-​political, funny and sympathetic, and yet also keeps them as ‘other’ through the aesthetics and themes which make them recognisable as South Asian as defined by the hegemonic discourse. It also suggests an idealised view of a multicultural Britain where everyone lives happily side by side, without interrogating whether this represents the reality of contemporary life in Britain. This representation reinforces conviviality –​living together –​and yet also being separate, so still always ‘other’. Hence the ‘popular’ British South Asian theatre production may embody a fixing of a racialised representation through the desire to entertain the audience.Thus, the complexities and contradictions of the use of humour and comedy will be examined throughout the productions.

Mapping the history/​ies of British South Asian theatres The attempt to make visible a history of theatre productions and practitioners that had remained largely invisible, requires several stages of research. One of the first of these is a mapping of what has already taken place to chart and acknowledge practices that have occurred, and make these visible to a wider field, in order that this may become a known and integrated part of ‘British theatre history’, rather than remaining on the margins as something that is always ‘other’ or ignored. The problems of naming and defining a ‘genre’ of something called ‘British South Asian theatre’ will be discussed at the beginning of Chapter 3, and was certainly a consideration for Professor Graham Ley in his project which aimed to map the history of British South Asian theatre, for which I was also part of the research team. This project, which ran from 2004 to 2008 at the University of Exeter, was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). This was the first funded project which aimed to reveal a previously unknown history of the theatre and performance practices made by South Asians in Britain. Ley outlines the scope and focus of the project, as well as some of the questions provoked by creating a documentation, which in effect became a history, or histories: It was obvious that the documentation was to an extent a history, which had its complement in the critical assessment in the companion volume. But the

12  Bollywood, Bhangra and being British

project embraced accounts of a large number of separate theatrical initiatives. Some few published discussions were showing a theoretical tendency to expect uniform characteristics from a diasporic theatre. At this stage of primary documentation, where none had existed before, the emphasis seemed to lie more responsibly on the plural ‘histories’ as a collected documentation not subject to a guiding, authorial principle. As a consequence, the title became ‘British South Asian theatres’, to be as specific as possible.What might emerge from that collection, for the reader, could form the basis of a conclusion (or set of conclusions) about a history of British Asian theatre. (Ley, 2010: 228) This project was significant in not only documenting the work of the better-​known companies such as Tara, Tamasha and Kali, but also some of the other lesser-​known histories including the language theatres; important initiatives such as the Hounslow Arts Cooperative (HAC), ACTA and the work produced at the Watermans theatre; companies whose work had not been discussed before, including Rifco; and live art practices. The project culminated in a conference in 2008 which brought together academics and theatre practitioners to debate the histories and current issues surrounding British South Asian theatre.Two books were produced from the project: a documented history which charted the work, including a DVD-​ROM of related visual material; and an edited collection of critical essays (Ley and Dadswell, 2011 and 2012).2 The significance of the project in creating an extensive body of work consisting of both documentation and critical thinking, has been an important step in the charting of the histories. There have also been a number of publications before and since the project that have contributed to the history in different ways: there are collections of plays; histories of Black and Asian playwrights and theatre productions placed in books together; histories of British South Asian plays and productions in books on their own; and discussion of British South Asian plays and playwrights in books discussing issues of British national identity.These types of publications show the ways that ‘minority ethnic’ theatres have often been placed together as a collective ‘other’ to white British theatres, and remained at the periphery or in relation to more dominant forms of theatre. However, each of these publications has been vital in creating the field, and developing discourse and debate around the productions and the communities. One of the first of these publications was a collection of plays published in 1993, edited by Kadjia George, entitled Six Plays by Black and Asian Writers (1993) which included plays by Meera Syal, Rukhsana Ahmad and Maya Chowdhry. This was an important beginning to the public availability of plays, a major step in the visibility of the histories.Another major step was the publication in 1997 of Graham Ley’s documentation of the first 20 years of Tara Arts in New Theatre Quarterly, which included interviews with and writings by Jatinder Verma, actress Shelley King and designer Magdalen Rubalcava (Ley, 1997). This was the first time this history had been discussed in an academic arena. This was followed by a number of publications which

Bollywood, Bhangra and being British  13

placed discussion of Black and Asian productions in the same volume: Griffin’s Contemporary Black and Asian Playwrights in Britain (2003); Godiwala’s edited collection Alternatives within the Mainstream: British Black and Asian theatres (2006) which includes chapters by figures who have been important in the subsequent writings of the history such as Alda Terracciano and Claire Cochrane; and Davis and Fuchs’s collection Staging New Britain: aspects of Black and South Asian British theatre practice (2006). Jen Harvie’s 2005 book Staging the UK contained a section on British South Asian theatre, particularly the work of Tamasha and a discussion of Bombay Dreams, and my own article on Bombay Dreams was published in the same year (Daboo, 2005). Two more important books came shortly before the two books from the AHRC history project were published: Colin Chambers’s Black and Asian Theatre in Britain: a history (2011), and Dominic Hingorani’s British Asian Theatre: dramaturgy, process and performance (2010). Chambers offers a vital study of the earlier history of the representation and presence of Black and Asian characters, performers, writers and companies in Britain from the sixteenth century onwards, showing a fascinating story of South Asians on stage in differing ways, and the orientalist and imperialist representations of South Asians in plays and productions. Hingorani’s book offers a useful investigation of aspects of the dramaturgy and staging of a number of productions by companies including Tara Arts, Tamasha, Kali and a number of playwrights. Victoria Sams’s Immigration and Contemporary British Theater: finding a home on the stage, published in 2014, makes some interesting connections between productions produced by migrant groups in Britain including Asian, African-​ Caribbean and Irish writers, highlighting the importance of different routes of migration and expression on stage. There has also been an increasing number of articles and work by academics who are approaching the productions from a range of perspectives, for example Mrunal Chavda (2015) and Chandrika Patel (2015), as well as an increase in the number of plays published either in collections, or individually. This movement of the documenting and shaping of a history or histories from the initial mapping, through to discourse and evaluation, is clearly a vital trajectory in the visibility and placing of the companies and productions within the wider field. However, the very process of doing this also invites problematic issues of potentially creating a ‘canon’ that can be seen as the representation of what constitutes British South Asian theatre through choices made in research and publication. In their work on Black British theatre, Brewer, Goddard and Osborne point to a similar concern of canon formation which ‘can suggest the replication of the hegemonic critical apparatus and its dominant rhetoric’ (Brewer et al., 2015: 1). Likewise, Dadswell indicates a similar concern in the history of British Asian theatre project where ‘in presenting a documentation we are inevitably engaged in a process of selection, and therefore run the risk of setting up an unintended canon’ (Dadswell, 2009: 221). Certainly, there is already a sense of a dominant canon potentially becoming established in the study of British Asian theatre particularly in the work of theatre companies Tara, Tamasha and Kali,

14  Bollywood, Bhangra and being British

partly due to their longer history and the writing about them, as well as the relative accessibility of their productions and archives. The histories revealed in the two books from the AHRC project offer a more diverse view, and this can help to broaden the perception of the range of productions and practitioners. The publications discussed above show an historical charting of the productions by South Asian practitioners, sometimes placed alongside African-​Caribbean under a united label of ‘Black’ or ‘minority’, and also often in relation to a wider discussion of British theatre and national identity. My contribution to the field through this book aims to further the discourse on representation and identity through looking at a number of productions in the light of issues from cultural studies and in relation to events in both India and the UK. In choosing to focus on forms of popular culture, particularly Bollywood and Bhangra, I intend to examine complex and often contradictory ways that these are integrated into stage productions, and the meanings that this creates. As well as discussing works by established companies such as Tara and Tamasha, I  will also focus on the work of Rifco, a company that has only previously been written about by Graham Ley (2011a), and discuss two West End musicals. This range of different types of productions offers a helpful resource for an interrogation of identity and community representation in different contexts. Discussion of the place of Bollywood and Bhangra not just in stage productions, but also in the lives of community members in their domestic sphere as well as public performances at events such as the melas3 and dance competitions contributes to a fuller investigation of the cultural life and performance forms in Britain today.

Positioning and limitations It is important with a project such as this to acknowledge the position of the researcher and writer, therefore this section will address my own background and rationale for the study, as well as the choices I have made for what is included, and the resulting limitations. I use the label ‘British South Asian’ to define myself due to my parents both coming from India, and migrating to Britain in 1957. Therefore, I am second generation, and have dealt with many of the issues confronting the children of migrants which are discussed in the plays. I experienced inter-​generational conflict with my decision to study Drama and Music at University, and work professionally as an actress and director, as well as eschewing any form of an arranged marriage. My experience of acting in television drama from the late 1980s showed the problems with representation of ethnic minorities at the time. Whichever programme I acted in, my character name was usually either Mrs Patel, Mrs Singh or Mrs Shah.There was rarely any kind of rationale that would distinguish why a character was a particular religion or community group suggested by the name; they were just a ‘typical’ Asian woman. If the focus was on an Asian family, the storylines were mainly about arranged marriages. If the character was placed in a white narrative, then often she was a doctor or lawyer or worked in a corner store, as a peripheral figure to the main action. Alongside this, I was also making my own theatre work,

Bollywood, Bhangra and being British  15

and developing a system of actor training using techniques and ideas based in South Asian performance and philosophy, as well as Western actor training forms. After undertaking an MA and PhD, I was offered the position of Lecturer in Drama at the University of Exeter in 2004. It was at this point that Graham Ley invited me to become part of his project on the history of British South Asian theatre, discussed earlier in this chapter. I had already written the article on Bombay Dreams (Daboo, 2005), so decided to extend the focus on mainstream productions and the use of Bollywood during my research for the project, which culminated in the publication of a chapter in the essay collection (Daboo, 2012). I had met musician Kuljit Bhamra at the project symposium in 2008. Bhamra is a significant figure in British South Asian performance, both in music as a composer, performer and producer, and having played a major part in the development of British Bhangra, as well as performing and composing for theatre: he was a performer in Bombay Dreams, and composed some of the music for the West End musical The Far Pavilions as well as working on a number of British South Asian theatre productions, and then was performer and co-​orchestrator on Bend It Like Beckham: the musical. He lives in Southall, and had begun to document the cultural histories of the town which has become a diasporic centre of migration, particularly for South Asian communities. He invited me to join the project to bring an academic dimension to the process, and we ran the Southall Story project from 2011 to 2014, which was also funded by the AHRC. As part of the project, we interviewed practitioners across different art forms including theatre, music, dance, film, visual arts and creative writing. This was an important factor in considering that the Western notion of ‘theatre’ needs to be widened to encompass other performance forms, as examined in this book. My work on this current book comes out of my research on both projects, and extends ideas on mainstream British South Asian theatre productions and the use of Bollywood and Bhangra. My experience with music and dance as well as theatre means that I  can move across performance forms, and analyse these together, as I did in a previous monograph examining the music and dance used in the ritual of tarantism in Southern Italy (Daboo, 2010). That monograph also drew together an interdisciplinary framework of performance studies, history and cultural studies to examine the relationship between the development of forms of performance and socio-​cultural events, which is also utilised in this present book. My own positioning as a British South Asian woman, as well as performer and academic, has clearly informed my focus in the book on identity and culture from my personal experience. I am offering my own interpretation of the productions discussed from the perspective of the issues raised, and this will give a particular view of the productions in the realm of the ‘popular’. I feel strongly about the need to not only make the history and productions visible, but also to place these in a position where the discourse arising from them can be seen as part of a wider discussion of British theatre and identity. Due to the focus of enquiry in the book, I have chosen to examine a relatively small number of productions. This will allow for close attention to be paid to

16  Bollywood, Bhangra and being British

them, but there are clearly many other productions that would have been useful to include. It is also important to stress that the practitioners and companies discussed have produced many other types of plays, and so the performances are not a sole indication of their work. Due to my previous research for the history project, as well as for ‘The Southall Story’, I tend to focus on culture and communities from an urban context in the UK, and mainly centre on London and the South East. I feel this is a particular limitation in this study, and one that could and should be addressed in future work. This does in part reflect that many of the companies are based in London and the South East, but there is still plenty of other work that has happened and is happening elsewhere around the country.

Structure of the book The book focuses on the discussion of a number of productions that adapt and incorporate elements of Bollywood and Bhangra in different ways, examining how the portrayal of British South Asians in the productions offers the potential for questioning identity and representation of the diaspora in mainstream theatre spaces. This first chapter offers an initial introduction to the book, followed by an introduction to the histories and relevant themes of both Bollywood and  Bhangra. This presents their origins and development in India, and in the case of Bhangra, the ways that this was (re)invented in the diaspora as the form of British Bhangra  through adaptation by second-​generation South Asians in London. Chapter 2 then presents an in-​depth discussion of the core histories and theories that form the basis of the discussion in the book. This begins with an outlining of the roots and routes of migration of South Asians into Britain in the period after the Second World War, and the importance that films from India played in the cultural and societal formation of the communities in their new life. The next sections investigate the key issues and terminologies of diaspora, identity and representation, suggesting ways of understanding these in relation to a globalised transnational world that moves the argument beyond the postcolonial. This is followed by a discussion on the topic of comedy and humour, an important aspect of many of the productions in the book, showing how a particular form of comedy was developed by second-​generation South Asians in live performance settings which then moved into mainstream television in Goodness Gracious Me, and became established as the representation of South Asians in mainstream culture. The final section in the chapter outlines what I label as the four markers of identity: culture clash, inter-​generational conflict, arranged marriage and Bollywood and Bhangra. These four markers emerge from residual racialised discourses of South Asians, and have become the means by which the communities are often discussed and represented. These four markers are present in the productions in the book in varying forms, and raise the question about whether representations conform to or can resist these imposed markers of identity. Chapters 3 and 4 present analyses of theatre productions that have adapted and incorporated aspects of Bollywood. Chapter 3 focuses on stage musicals, beginning

Bollywood, Bhangra and being British  17

with an interrogation of the term ‘British South Asian theatre’.The history of Asian Kool in the late 1990s leads into an analysis of Tamasha’s musical Fourteen Songs,Two Weddings and a Funeral, a stage adaptation of the film Hum Aapke Hain Koun …!. This is followed by an examination of the Indian Summer of 2002, to set the scene for a discussion of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s West End musical Bombay Dreams, placing Bollywood on a mainstream stage. Chapter 4 offers an examination of different forms of adaptation in theatre productions.An initial discussion of processes of adaptation results in the use of the term ‘transadaptation’ as the most useful to examine the process of translating and cultural transference in the inclusion of Bollywood in British theatre productions. The first section examines the ‘Bollywoodisation’ of European texts which are transadapted and set in India through the discussion of Tara Arts’s Kanjoos (2013) and Tamasha’s Wuthering Heights (2009). This is followed by an examination of Kneehigh’s production of Tanika Gupta’s play Wah! Wah! Girls (2012), which takes the idea of the mujra dancing girl seen in historical Bollywood films, and transfers this to a dancing club in East London. The final section explores Tara Arts’s Bollywood pantomimes, and a brief discussion of revue-​type shows such as The Merchants of Bollywood which offer audiences the pleasure and spectacle of seeing large-​scale song and dance numbers from films performed on stage. Chapter 5 moves the discussion from Bollywood to Bhangra, creating a focus on the identity of being both British and Asian in the productions through the use of music and dance. There is an extended discussion of the development of Rifco Arts and artistic director Pravesh Kumar’s path to creating work for a very specific audience. This is followed by an examination of two of Rifco’s productions, The Deranged Marriage (2004–​2006, 2015) and Britain’s Got Bhangra (2010, 2011, 2015), which show the conflict between first and second generations, as well as present a representation of Punjabi-​ness. This is also seen in the final production discussed, Bend It Like Beckham: the musical (2015), a stage musical transadaptation of Gurinder Chadha’s film. Themes from the musical, set in 2001 and performed in 2015, are examined through the composite nature of the music and dance which present the sometimes conflicting identity of being both British and Asian. The Conclusion questions whether the newer generations of South Asian theatre practitioners who are currently emerging are producing work that interrogates identity in very different ways to the productions discussed in the book, and if this indicates a shift from the use of Bollywood and Bhangra to other forms of representation in the future. One of the themes running through the book is the question of what it means to be British, who is counted as British, and how the idea of British-​ness has changed due to patterns of migration and new performance forms. Writer Hanif Kureishi, himself a second-​generation British South Asian, states that: I had to learn what it was to be British, which meant Britain had to reinvent itself for my benefit rather than the other way round. By which I mean that Britain had to see that it had become a different kind of place. (Kureishi, Interview, 2013)

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The ways in which Britain has, whether happily or in protest, become a different kind of place in the new millennium is examined in the productions discussed in the book.

Part II: Introduction to Bollywood and Bhangra This Part offers an examination of aspects of both Bollywood and Bhangra in order to introduce key moments in the histories and developments of both forms, as well as indicate their transnational movement beyond the subcontinent and into the cultural formation of the South Asian diaspora communities. This is a limited overview based on the needs of this book, and there is much more information about both forms that can be found in further reading, as well as watching the films and experiencing the music and dance.

Bollywood: Indian cinema and the pleasure of excess The term ‘Bollywood’ is a problematic and much-​contested label that has come to be seen as representative of films produced in India. Although it tends to particularly refer to Hindi films incorporating song and dance sequences, and made in the city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the term also offers a homogenisation of the many different types of films in different languages made in regions across the subcontinent. This suggests a fixed and singular idea of a ‘genre’ that belies the reality of the changes in the films that have taken place since the first feature film produced in India in 1913, and also that the films themselves demonstrate a strong level of heterogeneity that denies any form of singularity of classification. However, the idea of Bollywood extends beyond the films themselves, and the aesthetics and styles of the films have come to be seen as representative of ‘India’, and it is in this way that I use the term ‘Bollywood’ in this book to indicate the films and the industry surrounding them, as well as the transnational spread of the idea of what ‘Bollywood’ represents globally. This section offers a brief history of cinema in India to indicate the changing influences that relate to transnational flows of culture and performance, as well as shifting definitions of ‘nation’ that were embodied in the films. The section also explores some key areas that are of relevance to this book, particularly the song and dance sequences, and how these have also changed in response to shifting historical circumstances, as well as exchanges with other forms of music and dance around the globe. The films demonstrate a tension between modernity and tradition that is part of the discourse in the book in relation to the South Asian diaspora in Britain, and also the effects of globalisation and cultural capitalism in creating the transnational appeal of Bollywood films far beyond the borders of India. Desai and Dudrah suggest that it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when and by whom the term ‘Bollywood’ was first used, though they note that, just as Bollywood is a relativist term for films from Bombay in relation to Hollywood, the term ‘Tollywood’ was used in the 1930s by an American producer to refer to films

Bollywood, Bhangra and being British  19

produced in the Tollygunge area of Kolkata (Calcutta) (Desai and Dudrah, 2008: 1). Although Bollywood was used in a ‘tongue-​in-​cheek’ way by Indian media, it has now become a globally established term to define films which are ‘[c]‌haracterized by music and dance numbers, melodrama, lavish production and an emphasis on stars and spectacle’ (ibid.). The term itself places the films in relation to, and ‘other’ than, Hollywood, suggesting that Hollywood is the dominant marker by which South Asian films are seen in subordinate difference. This ‘othering’ also homogenises the range and histories of the films, as suggested above. The history of Indian cinema shows both a strong connection with live performance and film forms from other nations, as well as an attempt to use film to define the nation of India as it moved from colonial rule, through the nationalist movement, to independence in 1947 and subsequent shifts in the way that the ‘nation’ was represented by successive governments to itself and the outside world. Film, as a global industry and means of production, shows this connection with cultures and forms from both within and outside the subcontinent that have had a profound effect on the development of the Indian film industries. Film was first seen in India as early as 1896, with the touring exhibition of the Lumière Brothers’ new technology offering a means to show and produce representations of the local and global in a way that could be easily transported. In this way, film was very much a product of the modern, and attractive to the British and Indian elite who saw these first versions. After some early attempts at documentaries, the first full-​length commercial feature film, Raja Harishchandra was made in 1913 by Dhundiraj Govind Phalke, and was based on Hindu mythology (op. cit.: 5). Initially, these first films tended to imitate the early Western films that were shown in India, but gradually as film was seen as a way to articulate and express the Indian nation, film-​makers started drawing on forms from India as well as the West that resulted in a composite mixture of styles and aesthetics. This included the influence of traditional storytelling theatres in India that used song and dance as well as heightened character types to show stories of morality and religion; the epic stories of the Mahabharata and Ramayana; Parsi theatre, which developed in the nineteenth century and was influenced by European theatre seen in India, and introduced the proscenium arch as well as high comedy in its productions; and forms of popular regional theatre such as Sangeet Natak (music-​drama) from Maharashtra which uses music, song, dance and storytelling, as well as stock characters and comedy to explore religious themes and social issues. The use of heightened character types, and the exposition of feeling and mood through rasa theory,4 were also drawn into the mixture of Indian films. Along with this was the influence of forms of European and North American popular performance that were being seen in India, including vaudeville, burlesque, follies, pantomime, melodrama and cabaret, with performers of many ethnicities travelling to India to perform, including African Americans in minstrel shows. Mishra indicates that the transnational composite nature of Bollywood can be sourced to both the performance of British melodrama, and Indian aesthetics: ‘it was English/​colonial melodrama, suitably indigenised with rasas (notably of love-​longing and the tragic) that gave Bollywood its distinctive content’ (Mishra,

20  Bollywood, Bhangra and being British

2006: 18). Forms of music and dance also travelled quickly around the globe due to the new technologies of recording and reproduction, and jazz, ballroom and Latin American music and dance became very popular in Mumbai in the 1930s to 1950s, which led to ‘creative cross-​pollination between musicians, audiences, and entertainment entrepreneurs’ (Shope, 2014: 205). Through all these influences, film became a means to show both the modern and global, and articulate the growing independence of India as a nation: ‘Indian cinema participates in a social and political economy that strongly emphasizes the location of the modern within Indian society’ (Desai and Dudrah, 2008: 5). A major breakthrough that led to the establishment of a distinctive aspect of Hindi films came in 1931 with the introduction of sound, and the first talkie film, Alam Alra. This new technology allowed for the shift of song-​dance-​dramas from stage to the screen, and the ability to record the image and sound separately and then synchronise them resulted in the establishment of the playback singer, who sang and recorded the songs, which were then mimed to by the actors. This use of playback singers is one of the best-​known conventions in Bollywood films, and singers such as sisters Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle, as well as Mohammed Rafi and Kishore Kumar, became established stars in their own right through the soundtracks from the films. As well as singers, this new technology and approach led to the establishment of the large Indian orchestras using Western instruments interspersed with Indian ones, and film songs –​known as filmis –​became the most popular music in India (Booth and Shope, 2014: 18). The form of these film musicals was consolidated from the 1930s to 1950s, drawing on a wide range of styles of music and dance including jazz, ragtime and Latin American, as well as the introduction of rock and roll in the late 1950s and 1960s. Shope explains that this transnational flow from European and American live and film performances, and live performance in India such as cabarets, also influenced the music in the films: Cabarets were often inspired by subject material from Hollywood or European films, and many venues boasted jazz bands composed of foreign musicians, including African Americans. By the late 1940s, Mumbai cabarets and Hollywood cinema influenced a small number of early Hindi film music composers. […] Latin American popular music was one part of the development of this cabaret industry. […] Hollywood cinema, cabaret productions, and local jazz musicians influenced some of the core Hindi film song composers and arrangers of the 1940s and 1950s. (Shope, 2014: 203, 205, 211) The period from the late 1940s through to the 1960s, nostalgically referred to as the ‘Golden Age’ of Hindi cinema, saw the refining of what came to be known as ‘masala’ films which ‘draw on all aspects of Indian popular culture for their formulae. […] The appeal of these films is spectacle, melodrama and affect, and everything is designed to give maximum impact’ (Desai and Dudrah, 2008: 11–​12). The

Bollywood, Bhangra and being British  21

popularity of these films continued into the 1970s and 1980s with an increasing portrayal of violence and the ‘angry young man’ figure epitomised by the famous actor Amitabh Bhachchan. These films became less popular in the 1990s, and they were replaced by the ‘family film’, which was romantic and harked back to a more traditional view of India, though in a time of modernisation and economic liberalisation. This will be discussed further in Chapter 3 with the film Hum Aapke Hain Koun …! which was adapted by Tamasha Theatre Company into their production Fourteen Songs,Two Weddings and a Funeral. Other elements informed this development of the history of Indian cinema, one of which was colonialism. The British saw the potential of early films made by Indians to be subversive to colonial rule, and started a system of censorship of the films. This was often articulated as a way to control portrayals of immorality, particularly relating to sexuality and gender, thus forming part of the imperialist discourse of justifying colonial rule by protecting the ‘native’ from themselves (op. cit.: 7). This early influence of censorship remained after the British left as a residual means to control representation of the morals of the nation to itself, and ‘[a]‌s scholars have argued, these early censorship codes about race, gender and sexuality have had long-​term repercussions on postcolonial cinema in India’ (ibid.). This particularly related to changing representations of women, as the actress and image of ‘woman’ became the embodiment and bearer of values of morality and the nation. During the 1920s and 1930s, the desire to be part of the ‘modern’ led to the portrayal of the ‘modern girl’, who was seen as being within the influence of the West. She often had short hair, wore make-​up and Western clothes, and was overtly sexual. This changed during the rise of the nationalist movement, and particularly post-​independence with a rejection of Western values, and a return to women needing to be seen as chaste and traditional, and the embodiment of the new nation of India. Mehboob Khan’s film Mother India (1957) stars Nargis as the stoic and moral mother of not just her sons, but also the nation. Nargis herself shows the importance of the star actor in the Indian film industry who moves beyond the film and into commercial ephemera as part of the capitalist film industry. However, there is an interesting contradiction: Nargis herself was Muslim, and yet was portraying the essence of Hindu India in the film. Parama Roy suggests that she was able to do this because she was seen as being ‘cosmopolitan’, and that this ‘overwrites’ her Muslim identity and difference and is ‘aligned […] with that of the emerging Indian nation-​state and its commitment to a secular modernity’ (Roy, 2008: 115). During the ‘masala’ films of the 1970s and 1980s, women became increasingly sexualised in their portrayal, which was then reacted against in the ‘family film’ of the 1990s where women could be ‘modern’, but only within traditional values of home and family, as will be discussed in Chapter 3. This brief summarising of the development of Indian cinema shows the complex national and transnational influences that led to changes in the nature of the films and the industry. The song and dance sequences are a key aspect of the distinctiveness of these films, and yet can also create resistance to them from Western

22  Bollywood, Bhangra and being British

audiences more used to realism in cinema, as the extra-​diegetic nature of the sequences interrupts the narrative and sense of realism. However, it is important to understand the place that these have within the films, and the aesthetics that they draw on to elaborate the mood of the scene and emotion of the character. Indeed, this focus on emotion and affect is what establishes the particular nature of the films, and gives pleasure to the spectator: What seems to emerge in Hindi cinema is an emphasis on emotion and spectacle rather than tight narrative, on how things will happen rather than what will happen next, on a succession of modes rather than linear denouement, on familiarity with repeated viewings rather than ‘originality’ and novelty, on a moral disordering to be (temporarily) resolved rather than an enigma to be solved. The spectator is addressed and moved through the films primarily via affect, although this is structured and contained by narratives whose power and insistence derives from their very familiarity, coupled with the fact that they are deeply rooted (in the psyche and in traditional mythology). (Thomas, 2008: 29) The point about the primacy of affect is significant, as this has a higher importance than narrative or realism. The heightened character types, and the excess of emotion and spectacle in the films, are part of the established conventions that draw on aspects of the traditional Indian forms of performance discussed earlier. The use of heightened character types that are seen in these forms of traditional performance and absorbed into film, are different in intention and construction to stereotypes in a Western sense, and yet could be seen as racialised stereotypes by spectators not familiar with these conventions. The song and dance sequences form an internal landscape to express what is happening in the thoughts and feelings of the character, and elaborate on this, as a musician elaborates on a raga melody through expressing a particular rasa or mood. Gopal and Sen suggest that: [s]‌eemingly redundant to the text, the song-​dance is actually an enabling device which has allowed Hindi film to posit versions and visions of modernity that would otherwise be unrepresentable. Song-​dance is therefore both a measure of Bollywood’s difference from western cinema, as well as an explanation of Bollywood’s immense popularity all over the global South. It posits exterior and interior scenarios of modernity that the narrative is unable to depict, it envisions ways of acting and behaving not coded into the text, it registers the shock of the new not recordable by the prose of the film, and it affords the possibility of jouissance or joyous release that cannot be spoken by any character or voice. (Gopal and Sen, 2008: 147) This places the song and dance sequences within modernity, and it is the interruption and heightened excess of emotion and spectacle that leads to the enjoyment

Bollywood, Bhangra and being British  23

in a way that would not happen through realism. For Chakravorty, Bollywood ‘has always grappled with two competing modes of representation: melodrama and realism. This negotiation has reflected the larger cultural discourse surrounding tradition and modernity in India, as both continue to shape the narrative of democracy and citizenship’ (Chakravorty, 2009:  217–​218). The contestation within the song and dance sequences that interrupt the realism, and embody the negotiation between tradition and modernity, is also a significant aspect of debate within the theatre productions discussed in this book that also incorporate song and dance sequences. The elaboration of mood in the sequences also leads to a different way that audiences engage with the films in the space of the cinema that is generally unfamiliar to that of a Western cinema audience. In India, spectators actively and vocally respond to the films by talking back to them, loudly acknowledging their enjoyment, voicing their displeasure at a villain, and laughing and crying openly (Thomas, 2008: 28). As will be seen in the theatre productions discussed in this book, there is a transnational flow of this form of audience behaviour from Indian films into British theatre spaces, where South Asian audiences create an interruption to the established conventions of theatre audience behaviour by talking through a production, singing along to familiar songs and getting up to dance. The song and dance sequences in the films create an interstitial space, a ‘dream’ space which exists outside the ‘real’ world, that allows for a five-​minute song to contain six changes of costume, four different locations and troupes of dancers emerging from nowhere without this being an interruption to the experience of watching, but rather a heightening of this experience. If the song and dance sequences are seen in this way as operating in an interstitial or ‘third space’, it is perhaps not surprising that the films and songs became a space of nostalgic memory of the ‘homeland’ of India in the ‘home’ of the diaspora communities around the world, as the diaspora itself can be seen as being in such a ‘third’ or interstitial space, further explored in Chapter 2. This global movement of Bollywood has been discussed extensively (e.g. Desai, 2004; Mishra, 2002; Rajadhyaksha, 2003), and Chapter 2 demonstrates how the films migrated from India via different communities to become a part of the South Asian diasporic culture in Britain, and subsequently in the theatre productions discussed in this book. Morcom suggests that the live performance of the song and dance sequences uncoupled from the films arose in India in the 1990s as a result of economic liberalisation, and is a ‘model case of a neo-​liberal cultural formation, foregrounding ideas, aesthetics and socio-​economic realities of work, entrepreneurship, mobility, success, and individualism’ (Morcom, 2015: 291). This started as part of wedding ceremonies, where the sequences were performed ‘live’ for entertainment in front of guests. As weddings became ever more lavish and costly, these performances also grew in scale, sometimes employing professional choreographers as part of a neo-​liberal capitalist display of wealth (op. cit.: 296), and dance classes and institutions burgeoned throughout the country. This spread to the South Asian diasporic communities globally, and there is

24  Bollywood, Bhangra and being British

now a plethora of Bollywood dance classes leading to the forming of troupes, and the performance of Bollywood in competitions and melas (festivals). The style of dance and music reflects the composite nature of current Bollywood films, with ‘traditional’ styles mixing with contemporary, including hip hop and street. The forms that are blended together to create modern Bollywood dance include elements from the classical solo Indian dance forms of Bharatanatyam and Kathak, such as the use of mudras (hand gestures), arm movements and facial expressions; movements from Indian folk dances including Bhangra; and movements known as the ‘jhatkas and matkas’ (Shresthova, 2004: 91), which are the movements of the pelvis and hips in time to the music that create the posture of head, torso, and hips and pelvis going in opposite directions. The range of different genres of dance is shown in the description of classes in Honey’s Dance Academy, the first dance academy in the UK that specialises in Bollywood which was established by Honey Kalaria in 1997. In the classes, ‘students will learn various choreographed Bollywood routines ranging from Indian classical, traditional folk, Bhangra, Gharba to Middle Eastern, Latin American and hip hop’ (Honey’s Dance Academy, website). ‘Bollywood’ has become a global brand beyond the films themselves, having an influence on cultural forms including fashion, jewellery and furnishings, and elements of the music and dance are incorporated into Western forms of performance. It is due to this global use of the term ‘Bollywood’ that I use it in this book to represent the films, the industry, and the idea of what this is often seen to represent:  an all-​encompassing sensibility of ‘Indian-​ness’. The complex histories and heterogeneous nature of the films are overwritten by the one label which extends the concept of excess, melodrama, camp, and song and dance numbers into the understanding of how India is seen as a nation and culture.That these films are now often made with an NRI audience in mind, reinforces that the representation of ‘modern’ India is negotiated through the films and surrounding industries to both communities in India, and the diasporic communities that look to the films for a nostalgic return to the aesthetics and values of the ‘homeland’ through the enjoyment, spectacle, excess and familiarity. This enjoyment of the films extends beyond the South Asian diasporic communities, and they are highly popular in other parts of the world including the Middle East, Russia, Japan and China. The transnational movement of the films creates different meanings in different contexts for different communities. While conducting ethnographic research into migrant communities in the mountain village of Riace in Calabria in 2010, I visited the home of a young man from Afghanistan who had undergone a terrifying two-​year journey to escape from his home in Kabul, finally settling in Italy. As I went into his living room I saw that he was playing a Bollywood film on his television, and asked him about this. He said that the films are very popular in Afghanistan, that he loves India and its culture, and that the films remind him of the ‘homeland’ of Kabul that he has left behind. The films thus offer a transnational means of identification beyond South Asian communities, and have a global popularity that spreads the label of ‘Bollywood’ around the world.

Bollywood, Bhangra and being British  25

Bhangra: a very British (re)invention The journey of Bhangra music and dance from the Punjab to being (re)invented in Britain by younger South Asian generations from the late 1970s demonstrates how cultural forms can be adapted and used as new means of identification in the context of a diaspora. In this way, Bhangra as it developed in Britain is a ‘cultural form shaped by migration and diaspora’ (Hyder, 2004: 70) and its composite nature, drawing on elements of music from both the subcontinent and the West, offers a ‘re-​­contextualisation of the original rural dance from Punjab within the new socio-​ cultural environment of the communities in Britain, where tradition came to meet Western mainstream music’ (Leante, 2004: 126). The movement from ‘traditional’ Bhangra performed at weddings and mehfils (gatherings) in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s, through the forming of second-​generation Bhangra bands such as Heera, Alaap and Premi who fused Bhangra with Western instruments, sounds and technologies in the 1980s, to the remixes of Bally Sagoo and the Asian Underground music of Apache Indian and Talvin Singh in the 1990s and into the new millennium, charts the shift in South Asian diasporic identity formation and presence in mainstream cultural spaces. Bhangra is thus a significant feature of British South Asian cultural life and history, and its presence in productions in mainstream theatre spaces is therefore important to consider in this book. The dominance of Bollywood has tended to override Bhangra in academic discourse around South Asian identity in theatre, however, Bhangra holds a vital place in the identities and visibility of communities in Britain, and therefore needs to be seen alongside Bollywood as a means of representation for South Asian communities in Britain. Bhangra dance and song originated in rural Punjab, particularly West Punjab which is now part of Pakistan. It was usually performed by men in farming communities at the spring festival of Vaisakhi (Baisakhi) which celebrates the harvest. Although the precise history and origin is not clear, Bhangra was being identified as a form of dance in this way in the late nineteenth century, as seen in this extract from the Punjab Gazetteer from 1893 which offers an ethnographic description of life in the rural Rawalpindi district, and names Bhangra as being performed at weddings and the Vaisakhi festival: In the spring, up to 1st Baisakh when the wheat is filling in the ear, the Jats gather at the daira nightly to dance and sing. The song, which is usually of an erotic character, is always a solo, and during the singing all present stand still. At the end of each verse the audience join in the chorus, dancing all the time. The dance is known as bhangra. (Punjab Government, 1893: 368) The movement from the fields of Punjab to a more formal presentation of the dance and music was part of the post-​independence movement to create both regional (Punjabi) and national identity through the presentation of traditional forms of dance as representing the new nation. Roy states that:

26  Bollywood, Bhangra and being British

Modern bhangra, however, was invented after the partition of India in 1947. Modern bhangra is the creation of a small group of hereditary performers of traditional Panjabi drumming and dance who received royal support; it has since become incorporated into representations of regional Panjabi identity by the post-​colonial Indian state. (Roy, 2014: 142) She notes that regional ‘folk’ groups performed at the Republic Day celebration in New Delhi in 1954. This included a group called PEPSU from Patiala in the Punjab who danced a style they called ‘Bhangra’ which they related to the Vaisakhi festival. Roy proposes that they performed reconstructed and choreographed versions of what might have been several different types of traditional dance which then became established as the single and essentialised form of Bhangra through the re-​presentation on a more formal stage that also established it as a means of performing Punjabi identity. This became a specifically Sikh identity, though originally other communities had also performed the dance, and beyond this, often associated with the jat or farming communities. The importance of Jat as an identity is discussed further in the production of Britain’s Got Bhangra in Chapter 5. This formalised version of Bhangra was performed in colleges and universities in the Punjab, and it was through this route that Bhangra originally migrated to Britain in the late 1960s, with younger Punjabis who had performed Bhangra in the ‘homeland’ wanting to recreate this in the new ‘home’ of Britain as a means of identification. Harbinder Singh came from Jalandhar in the Punjab, and learned Bhangra dance in school and college. He moved to the UK and started school in Southall in 1964. He notes that there was no Punjabi music around at the time, and he asked his head teacher if he could start a Bhangra dance group with other schoolboys. Singh both choreographed and played drums, leading to the official forming of the dance troupe in 1968. They performed at competitions nationally, and also for weddings and mehfils for the local Punjabi communities. At weddings, people wanted a singer to perform popular Punjabi songs so Balbir Kalia joined as a singer and Singh choreographed dances to the songs (Singh, H. 2011). Kalia later went on to be part of some of the major Bhangra bands in the 1980s, and the singers and songs tended to emerge from the dance troupes of these early stages in this way. Singh’s troupe was named the Great Indian Dancers in 1971, and has since performed throughout the world. They identify themselves as performing the ‘traditional’ Bhangra dance style as it had migrated to Britain, as do the Punjab Dancers, led by Jarnail Singh, which is also based in Southall. The keeping to the ‘traditional’ style of Bhangra included the movements, instruments and costume that had become established as the markers of Bhangra in India. The dance is usually accompanied by instruments from the Punjab such as the dhol, a double-​sided barrel drum played with sticks; the toombi, a single-​stringed instrument that has a high pitch when plucked; and a form of double-​flute similar to a fipple.The costume, seen in Figure 1.1, includes the distinctive headwear of the pug (turban) and the turla or torla, the fan-​like adornment on the pug. The dance movements are often

Bollywood, Bhangra and being British  27

FIGURE 1.1 The

Great Indian Dancers in 1968 (left). Source: Harbinder Singh, courtesy of the Southall Story project archive. The Punjab Dancers in 1986 (right). Source:  Ammy Phull, courtesy of the Southall Story project archive.

described as mimicking actions of farmers in the fields, such as sowing and harvesting crops. Dancers can have rammal which are scarves worn on the fingers that are waved around, and sometimes hold percussion instruments such as the lattice-​like sapp. The movements include plenty of jumps, and often acrobatic balances such as that in the picture of the Punjab Dancers in Figure 1.1.The traditional form of the song consists of bholiyan, or verse couplets, performed as a call-​and-​response, and often contain lyrics about the life of the farmer, sometimes also with erotic sentiments. As the South Asian communities in Britain began to grow through the 1970s, the influx of Asians from East Africa had a particular influence on the development of the music.These young Asians had greater exposure to Western music and technology in East Africa than their counterparts who had migrated from India, and this experience led to the particular journey of the creation of British Bhangra as a (re)invention of the traditional form. One of the earliest of the new Bhangra bands was Alaap. Lead singer Channi Singh was originally from the village of Salar in the Punjab, and had been performing Hindi film songs as well as dancing Bhangra in college in Jalandhar before moving to the UK in 1976. He states how he became involved with performing music in Southall when he was working for the local post office: Actually, when I started in the post-​office I saw that on the streets, on the road, in the cars, our music was not being played at all, Punjabi music, and usually it was Western music or other kinds of music the youngsters used to listen to. And I thought in my mind if that remains like that, what about our culture, where will our culture grow, and we might lose our identity. So this is how the idea came into my mind. (Singh, C., 2011) He brought together some of his friends who could play instruments, and they then approached Deepak Khazanchi to produce an album. Khazanchi had moved to the UK from Uganda, where he had played and listened to Western music. He

28  Bollywood, Bhangra and being British

had experience of working with Western music producers in London and using the new recording technologies available at the time, and began creating a new sound with Alaap that blended the traditional Bhangra with Western instruments, rhythms and technologies, keeping the focus on the dance aspect of the music: You see, the Bhangra music itself is dance music, you dance. And already the synthesizers and drums were happening in the Western world in the dance music. And you could blend it with the dhol, you could fit it in. I said, yeah, it fits in there, it works fine and it’s a modern sound. Well, Bhangra music needed that punch. It did not have that punch, it was more like ‘tunka, tunka, tunka’. Or the dhol wouldn’t have the proper bass.Whereas the English music when you go to the discotheque was ‘duketty, duketty’. I said if we had that it’s going to make Bhangra sound superb, that’s why I called it Dance With Alaap. (Khazanchi, 2011) The album Dance With Alaap was released in 1981 and became a huge hit, containing one of Alaap’s best-​known songs, ‘Bhabiya Ni Bhabiye’. The album includes instruments such as the electric guitar, Western drum kit and synthesisers accompanying the Punjabi songs. Similar to Khazanchi, Southall-​based producer and composer Kuljit Bhamra, who had been born in Kenya, also began working with emerging bands such as Premi and Heera to create a new sound of Bhangra that was mixed with Western influences. Bhamra also had experience of the more ‘traditional’ Bhangra through having accompanied his mother, Mohinder Kaur Bhamra, who is a renowned singer and performed at weddings and concerts throughout the country from the 1960s, sometimes with the singers and bands in the Midlands such as A. S. Khang, who similarly were performing the more ‘traditional’ Bhangra sounds. But it was in London, and largely due to the work of Khazanchi and Bhamra, that the new sound of British Bhangra emerged. The songs contained simplified Punjabi lyrics and the themes changed from being about farming and the Punjab to being about love and relationships instead to be more suitable for young South Asians in Britain.The music became hugely popular, and with the recordings being available on cassette and vinyl, soon also spread abroad in a transnational flow back to India, where the new ‘modern’ Bhangra started influencing the way it was heard and performed in the ‘homeland’, as Channi Singh explains: Because they had never listened to that kind of music before, the youngsters experienced a new kind of music and the lyrics, which were very simple, so they could relate. So they related to that kind of music and the beat was very, very good. And the whole package of the songs was excellent. So this is how it became popular with youngsters –​not only youngsters, with elderly people as well, the housewives as well. And not only the Punjabi people, but almost all the communities living in this country. And from this country it went to all over other countries and I saw many proofs of that, people had never listened to that kind of music in India as well. People who visited this

Bollywood, Bhangra and being British  29

country from India, they took our tapes back and when they played them there everybody found my address, they wrote to us, they said for the very first time we have experienced such lovely Punjabi music with the modern instrumentation, modern aspects. (Singh, C., 2011) The bands gained great popularity and started performing at concerts throughout the country, including the infamous Daytimer concerts where thousands of young Asians would travel to venues including the Hammersmith Palais and the Empire Ballroom in Leicester Square to watch bands such as Alaap and Heera performing, as seen in Figure 1.2. The Daytimers developed a certain notoriety due to young South Asian women also attending, and changing in the toilets out of their modest schoolclothes into more revealing outfits. Young people also sometimes skived off school to go to the Daytimers, and eventually they were only held during the school holidays. This ‘modern’ Bhangra created conflict with some members of the elder generation who felt that it was ‘polluting’ the ‘traditional’ and ‘authentic’ sound of Bhangra, and that this was a reflection of the younger generation losing touch with their culture and being contaminated by immoral influences of the West, also evidenced by the behaviour of young women at the Daytimers. As Katrak explains: The elders object to a modernized bhangra because they wish to preserve a traditional style of bhangra. They regard fusion attempts as betraying their cultural values.They want their bhangra sounds ‘unpolluted’ by ‘western influences’, and as pristine as their memories of this music and dance when they themselves may have participated in them in their native India. […] For the elders, the new sounds and movements betray their culture and memories. (Katrak, 2002: 78–​79, 81–​82)

FIGURE 1.2  Channi

Singh performing with Alaap (left), and Kumar and Dhami from Heera (right) performing in a Daytimer concert at the Empire Ballroom, Leicester Square, in 1988. Source: Ammy Phull, courtesy of the Southall Story project archive.

30  Bollywood, Bhangra and being British

This demonstrates the tension between ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’, between preserving the ‘old ways’ and embracing new ones to allow for the change in identification for the second generation. Thus, the music became an embodiment of culture clash and inter-​generational conflict, discussed in Chapter 2 as markers of identity for British South Asian communities. Despite the objection of some elders, the changes and mixings of Bhangra music continued. Deepak Khazanchi brought about the next development in British Bhangra music by deciding to do a remix album of songs he had previously produced, called Bhangra Fever, in 1986. This anticipated the shift towards the DJ scene in the 1990s, where the bands were gradually replaced by DJs who were remixing and creating new sounds in clubs that reflected the change culturally and in identity for the new younger generation. Bally Sagoo became a particular pioneer of this approach, and other artists such as Apache Indian and Punjabi MC also began to have success in the mainstream sphere of Western music with their new composite sound. This sound mixed Asian music with that of music developed in the Black communities in the US and Britain, including reggae, rap, dub and hip hop. Les Back discusses this process of the mixing of musical forms from different diasporic groups in London with reference to the development of music amongst younger South Asians: Musical genres have converged on South London from the Caribbean and North America and black culture has been created with European specificities and transatlantic connections. This process takes on further transnational nuances when South Asian lexical and cultural elements are introduced into these syncretic processes. The modes of expression that are produced possess a kind of triple consciousness that is simultaneously the child of Africa, Asia and Europe. (Back, 1996: 185) This transnational mixing of Bhangra with other sounds became known as the ‘Asian Underground’, which included artists such as Talvin Singh who established the Anokha Club Night in the Blue Note in East London. Asian dance music also took a new direction, with bands such as Fun^Da^Mental and the Asian Dub Foundation fusing hip hop, house and techno with Asian sounds. This was linked to the club and festival scene that fused Western dance music with forms of music from ‘other’, particularly ‘Third World’ sources, leading to the ‘Ethno-​Trance’ or ‘Global Dance Fusion’ movement, creating an exoticisation of Asian music, while placing it in mainstream spaces (Hyder, 2004: 77). This composite mixing of forms has continued from the 1990s through to today. Artists such as Rishi Rich, who was born in Croydon in 1976, have mixed R&B with Punjabi music to create new sounds. Rich is part of the younger generation of British South Asians who feel a freedom to use musical forms and styles from both India and Britain in order to create an expression of his own identity as being both British and Asian:

Bollywood, Bhangra and being British  31

I always put it down to the house I grew up in. I had my grandma listening to shabads or ghazals, the kind of music she liked, and then you had my dad, who loved R D Burman and he listened to Bollywood music. But my mum loved Elvis. So it was a mixture between real Indian music, Hindi music and soul/​ funk music. And if you listen to my music now, my music is a fusion between Indian music and soul music and a bit of classical, it’s everything. And I think that’s where my whole fusion has come from. (Rich, Interview, 2011) He formed the Rishi Rich Foundation with singers Juggy D and Jay Sean, and produced the song ‘Dance With You’ (‘Nachna Tere Naal’) in 2003 which was sung in both English and Punjabi, and reached number 12 in the UK singles chart. As well as these developments in Britain, both the ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ forms of Bhangra dance and music were being performed in India, and also incorporated into Bollywood films, as Roy indicates: Bhangra’s popularity, in both its modern, ‘traditional’ postcolonial form and its more contemporary globalized form, led to its incorporation in commercial Hindi cinema –​which led to further transformations that moved in parallel to bhangra’s already dual identity as a contemporary popular music form throughout global Indian communities (and beyond) and a traditional symbol of Panjabi identity. (Roy, 2014: 142) This leads to what she describes as a ‘Bollywoodized’ (op. cit.: 150) form of Bhangra music and dance in the films, where Bhangra is mixed with Bollywood styles to offer a sense of Punjabi-​ness as being ‘jolly’ and celebratory, hence Bhangra is often used in wedding scenes, and also comes to represent traditional values: ‘the bhangra in the wedding setting points to the heroine’s affirmation of traditional values and interaction into the family’ (op. cit.: 157).This will be examined further in the productions examined in Chapters 3 and 5. Roy discussed how this use of Bhangra in Bollywood has created the representation of the ‘jolly Sikh’ in contemporary Indian culture through films from the 1990s where, ‘with the images of the devout, brave and the jolly Sikh dominating the media, the Sikh becomes the site of transparency and positive rusticity that the urban India is alleged to have lost’ (op. cit.: 180). In this way, ‘traditional’ Bhangra becomes a nostalgic representation of the older times and values to communities in both India and the UK. There will be further discussions of Punjabi-​ness in relation to the development of comedy and representations of South Asian culture in the UK in Chapters 2 and 5, as well as issues of gender in a tradition that has been largely male-​dominated. The development of Bhangra music in Britain reflects the experience of the journey of South Asian migrants in the diaspora through generations from the 1960s to today. The visibility and awareness of the dance has increased over the past ten years in part due to its presence on television through mainstream popular

32  Bollywood, Bhangra and being British

programmes such as ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent, where the duo dance group Signature (Suleman Mirza and Madhu Singh) mixed Bhangra with Michael Jackson and came second in the finals in 2008. Many Bhangra as well as Bollywood dance troupes have been seen on the programme, and in versions in other countries as part of the Got Talent franchise. There has been a transnational flow of Bhangra as a source of identification for Asian communities in diasporas around the world, with both ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ Bhangra being performed by communities in other parts of Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and Southeast Asia. Bhangra’s positioning as a strong and visible marker of identity for British South Asian communities makes its use in theatre productions similarly reflect on the process of identification of being both ‘Asian’ and ‘British’, and the productions discussed in Chapter 5 that use Bhangra music and dance on stage show such a negotiation of identity through performance. While being very different to Bollywood, Bhangra is also connected through being present in the films, and as a cultural and aesthetic marker of identity for South Asian communities in Britain. Both forms show the tension between modernity and tradition, as well as problematic notions of ‘authenticity’ that are also reflected in the theatre productions discussed in the book. The transadaptation of cultural forms from the ‘homeland’ of the Indian subcontinent to the ‘home’ of the diaspora in Britain and then back again, offers a way to examine the complexities of the transnational flows that are present in the experience of the diaspora, and this will be the focus of the discussion of key theories, themes and terms in the next chapter.

Notes 1 ‘Language theatres’ is the term given to productions performed in languages other than English, for example Gujarati, Punjabi etc., often in community spaces. 2 Ley discusses the reasons for deciding to have two separate books in Ley, 2010: 227–​232. 3 A mela is a gathering or festival. Originating in the Indian subcontinent, melas now take place in South Asian diasporas around the world, where they can be commercial events that include performances of music, dance and theatre, as well as selling goods and food. 4 A rasa is the ‘taste’ or ‘flavour’ found in works of art and performance that create a sensibility or feeling in the spectator. Rasa aesthetics was discussed in the Natyashastra, a treatise on the performing arts written by the sage Bharata in the Vedic period, between first century BCE and third century CE.

2 MAPPING MIGRATION Transnational formations of diaspora

Diasporic roots and routes There have been transnational flows of people between South Asia and the UK for 600 years, and the presence of Indian communities in Britain is certainly not limited to the twentieth century. Colin Chambers (2011) offers a fascinating charting of this history of Indian migrants, including their representation and participation in theatre productions and public spaces, seen increasingly from the nineteenth century onwards. This shows the cultural movements and influences that have occurred over a long period of time, and also highlights the imperialist framings of the representation of the Asian ‘other’ on stage. This form of representation aimed to emphasise British superiority and create a cohesion of the idea of ‘nation’ through promoting the triumph of the empire, as well as an exoticisation of the people and culture from the Eastern colonies, these representations conforming to Edward Said’s articulation of ‘orientalism’ (Said, 1978). Chambers indicates that in the nineteenth century ‘theatre reflected a new notion of being British’ (Chambers, 2011: 47) due to imperial expansion, and that this was ‘reinforced by white theatre’s control of representation of the non-​white Other’, where equality of the ‘Other’ ‘was denied by supremacist Victorian racism’ (ibid.). While the focus in this book is on the post-Second ​World War migration and establishment of diasporic communities in Britain, it is important to acknowledge this prior history to appreciate that the imperialist and orientalist representations and narratives based in the justification and promotion of empire and colonialism have a lingering residual impact on the identity and representation of South Asians through to today, as will be discussed in this chapter. The larger movements of migration that began after the Second World War were in part to help economic growth and fill gaps in employment in Britain by drawing on workers from (in some cases former) colonies. India had gained independence

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in 1947, leading also to Partition and the creation of a separate Pakistan.The turbulence and trauma resulting from this led to many losing their land and livelihood, particularly in the region of the Punjab which was torn in pieces with a sweep of Sir Cyril Radcliffe’s pen.1 Therefore, when the offer came from the recently departed ‘motherland’ of Britain to travel there and find work with the promise of employment and a better life, and the possibility of helping their family back in the subcontinent, men began to move to Britain to fulfil the migrant dream.What they encountered when they arrived was often very far from the golden land of opportunity. Life for these early migrants in the 1950s and early 1960s was generally very difficult. They faced racism in both their social and work lives, as well as adjusting to a very different climate and culture. There was little in the way of shops selling Indian food, and communities were only just beginning to form. One of the places that became a diasporic centre for South Asians was Southall, a town to the west of London. Part of the reason for this was the possibility for employment due to the factories and industries already established there because of the transport links of the Great Western Railway, the Grand Union Canal and the close proximity to Heathrow Airport. The airport was, and still is, a major source of employment for residents in the town, but it has also often been the port of arrival for migrants from the subcontinent, and this nearness to Southall is another reason that it has become an initial ‘home’ to so many. Shanawar Chaudhry is the son of A. M. Chaudhry who set up the famous TKC (Tandoori Kebab Centre) restaurant on Southall Broadway in 1965, which is still open today. A. M. Chaudhry arrived in Britain in 1963, and Shanawar explains how his father ended up in Southall due to its proximity to Heathrow: My father came from Pakistan in 1963. He did what all his generation did at that time, that was to try and better themselves for their family, trying to provide a future for them, trying to provide a stable income for them. So what my father did, he decided to come to London and when he got enough money together he came here in 1963. He left myself and my mother and my sister in Pakistan while he tried to establish himself here in the United Kingdom. He was a very popular, well-​liked man in Pakistan, known for his charitable works, because he was actually a doctor and he always treated the less fortunate. And he came to England with nothing, and sat on the bus when he came off the plane from Heathrow Airport. And then he sat on the bus until the fare was exhausted, so what happened was, being a Muslim, he decided to turn right, therefore he entered Southall. So he decided to establish himself in Southall and he found accommodation and decided to stay here. (Chaudhry, 2012) Ravi Jain, who went on to found the National Association of Asian Youth which played an important part in developing the cultural life of younger South Asians in Britain, describes his first experience of encountering the UK when he arrived from India in 1964:

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I wasn’t really accustomed to the weather and found the place was forbidding. And I think at that time the community used to be no more than 6,000 people. Our life used to be mostly work, which used to be five and a half days working, and by the time you had come out of the work on Saturday afternoon all the shops were closed and you are just relaxing, because I found the work very hard, very arduous. I personally had never worked in a factory, so within a week my hands were full of blisters. It was not an easy place.Then shopping and food created a massive problem, and, being a vegetarian, a strict vegetarian, didn’t help. The house where we were living, we were something like twelve people, all men, living in one house. (Jain, 2011) Over time, as the men settled, they began to bring their wives and children from the subcontinent, which created more established communities who worked together to develop shops, cultural activities and religious institutions to support and enhance their lives. This increase in population also led to an increase in resentment and racism, and issues of racist employment practices, immigration laws, shortage of housing and education for their children affected the communities greatly. Groups began to mobilise to address these concerns, and organisations such as the Indian Workers Association (IWA) instituted industrial action, demonstrations and legal intervention to assist the communities.2 There was also an increase in the visibility of cultural forms that had migrated from the ‘homeland’, one of which was films, and the watching of these films became an important means of uniting the communities and providing entertainment. Southall had three cinemas which regularly showed South Asian films: the Century, Dominion and Himalaya Palace, which is pictured in Figure 2.1. The Dominion on King Street had been bought by the Southall branch of the IWA in 1965 and used both as their office and a cultural space for the community for meetings and events, including performances and wrestling matches as well as showing films. This building is also close to where 15-​year-​old Gurdip Singh Chaggar was murdered in a racially motivated attack in 1976, the event that led to the founding of Tara Arts as the first British South Asian theatre company discussed in Chapter 3, and also where the body of Blair Peach was laid out after his murder by a police officer in the uprisings in April 1979 in response to the communities defending their town from a ‘political’ meeting by the far-​r ight racist National Front. Another significant pattern of migration started from the early 1960s with the movement of South Asians from African nations, particularly East Africa, to Britain. There had been several generations of these Asians in Africa who had been brought there to assist in the development of the British empire as indentured labour. They had a very different lifestyle compared to the communities they had left behind in India, with their children being educated in English, having a generally better quality of life with an ambivalent position in society having African servants, while remaining in a situation of inferiority to the British. Due to the decline of the British empire in Africa, Asians began to be expelled by the new governments of the African nations,

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FIGURE  2.1 The

Himalaya Palace cinema in Southall, advertising Bollywood films, in 2010. The building no longer acts as a cinema, and is now a market. Source: Ammy Phull, courtesy of the Southall Story project archive.

and were offered the opportunity of moving to Britain, which many accepted. This led to an increase in the presence of South Asians in Britain, and indeed created the term ‘Asian’ to indicate those communities originating in the Indian subcontinent but that had formerly been based in East Africa, in contrast to the African communities.The films from the Indian subcontinent were also popular amongst the diasporic Asians in Africa, as explained by film-​maker and writer Shakila Maan who was born in Kenya. She talks about how Hindi films were shown to Asian communities there: My father used to run a 16mm film club. And at that time you could rent Hindi movies, and they had agents dotted around, so we would get Awaara and whatever the current film was, you could get a 16mm print. And they would send them over to various film clubs. People would have their evening out and we would sit there and watch these films. My father would be projecting them. And that was our entertainment, Hindi cinema. My mother and father were crazy about the films. Asians would come from different villages and towns to see the films. And they wouldn’t think twice about coming 300 miles or 400 miles to have dinner with you, see a film and then go back. We would go to see a movie in Kenya on a Friday, drive to Uganda and see a movie on Saturday, and then go to Tanzania and see a movie there. So we’d spend four or five days just doing that. (Maan, 2014) Like many East Africans, her father lost all his wealth when they were expelled from Kenya in 1973, and she describes that coming to the UK was not only a shock in terms of the freezing cold weather, but also from leaving a life in the expanse of the Kenyan landscape, and instead having to live in poverty and hunger in Huddersfield

Mapping migration  37

in one tiny room: ‘From such a vastness to this, it was quite shocking, quite profound’ (ibid.). Another important route of migration came through the war between East and West Pakistan in 1971 that led to the independence of Bangladesh. While there had been significant numbers of migrants from the region to Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, the war created an increase in this migration, and many Bangladeshis settled in East London, particularly in and around Brick Lane. There have been migrants from other parts of the subcontinent including Sri Lanka, and actress Natasha Jayetileke and radio DJ Nihal Arthanayake are both of Sri Lankan origin. There were also a smaller number of South Asian migrants from Caribbean nations where they had likewise been part of the indentured labour system. These new groups of South Asians from different parts of the world led not just to a greater presence in Britain, but also changed the cultural landscape through bringing their own practices with them that would eventually lead to innovations in music, dance, theatre and film, particularly with the second generation. Some of this development was discussed in Chapter 1, and will be further examined in this and subsequent chapters. These patterns of migration established the presence of South Asian diasporic communities in Britain, but there have also been many other newer migratory groups since then, and this flow to and from the subcontinent and other parts of the world is continuing through to today, with more recent migrants continuing to shape and change the cultural life of the communities and the country. These many roots and routes of migration of South Asians into Britain show the multiplicity of identities that were drawn into the homogeneous label of ‘Asian’ and ‘British’.This has led to a contestation of these labels, including the most commonly used term ‘British Asian’. In the attempt to overcome the binary of ‘British’ and ‘Asian’, Ali et al. (2006) in their important edited collection A Postcolonial People: South Asians in Britain have instead coined the term ‘BrAsian’ as a marker of identity ‘to designate members of settler communities which articulate a significant part of their identity in terms of South Asian heritage’ (Sayyid, 2006: 5).This compound term suggests a fusion rather than separation or ‘othering’ of Western and non-​Western, and sees diasporic communities as being on the ‘cusp inbetween’ (op. cit.: 7), or to use Homi Bhabha’s term ‘hybrid’ discussed later in this chapter, and also offering an ‘ironic citizenship’ (op. cit.: 8) where the term ‘British’ is contracted in an attempt to move away from its associations with whiteness and empire (op. cit.: 6). While acknowledging the process behind this, I choose to use the term British South Asian instead. This is to indicate that I am focusing on the communities of South Asian origin, whether from the subcontinent or other parts of the world, rather than those from Southeast and East Asia.The idea of ‘Asia’ in the UK tends to imply South Asia due to colonial history, however, it is important to note that there are communities from other parts of the continent of Asia living in the UK. Additionally, there is a tendency for South Asian to imply ‘Indian’, in part because of the longer-​term association pre-​independence, and also perhaps a laziness or imperialist homogenising in not acknowledging the different national, as well as regional and ethnic differences in the communities placed under the same label. It is impossible to use a term that

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will be applicable for all individuals, and indeed the choice of self-​identification is significant in thinking about a diasporic formation. However, for the purposes of this book, I will use the term ‘British South Asian’ which is the considered identity marker I use for myself, and to indicate that the investigation of being ‘British’ and what this means is important in understanding the negotiations of being South Asian in Britain. At times I also use the term ‘Indian’ rather than ‘South Asian’, either in relation to pre-​independence India, or the specific nation post-​independence, or to acknowledge that this is the perceived dominant idea or aesthetic being used, particularly in relation to Bollywood and Bhangra. A Postcolonial People is a very significant book in the study of South Asians in Britain, offering a change in discourse to the previous ways that the communities were studied and discussed. As a result, I  will be using several chapters from the edited collection as the basis of the argument later in this chapter to consider how these previously existing discourses have also shaped cultural representations of the communities, and questioning whether these representations are also ones that are being used in theatre productions. As Sayyid states in the Introduction to the book: ‘The representations of South Asian in Britain have for the most part continued to rely on a conceptual vocabulary borrowed from the legacy of Indology and its allied disciplines’ (Sayyid, 2006: 2). Indology can be seen as a ‘variant of orientalism’ (ibid.), which sustains the colonial gaze of seeing the West as normative, and India as the ‘other’. The ideas in A Postcolonial People will be placed alongside those from key theorists on diaspora from cultural studies and sociology. Postcolonial theory is also key in the investigation due to the imperial history and residual discourse, and the work of Homi Bhabha will become part of this discussion. However, it is necessary to move beyond postcolonial thought to acknowledge the importance of movement due to globalisation and transnationalism, which exists in a different relationship to that of older empires and their colonies.Then again, transnational theories have a tendency to overlook the necessary political imperative which comes from focusing on a specific place, and can show particular power relations and histories that might become invisible in a wider transnational gaze. The political angle of postcolonial theory is therefore important to retain, particularly when looking at diasporic communities living in the ‘motherland’ of the former empire, and in relation to the politics of marginality. Chandra Mohanty has extended her thinking from postcolonial feminism to what she defines as transnational feminism or ‘feminism without borders’, which investigates capitalism, globalisation and transnationalism as new forms of oppression for marginalised groups, but keeps an awareness of the political concerns of colonialism and specificity of place which is vital in thinking about these wider global movements. She points out that in this wider discourse, marginalised histories, particularly of women, can be made invisible and forgotten: Recovering and remembering insurgent histories, and seeking new understandings of political subjectivities and citizenship have never been so important, at a time marked by social amnesia, global consumer culture, and the

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worldwide mobilization of fascist notions of ‘national security’. [Capitalism, globalisation and neo-​imperialism] kills, disenfranchises, and impoverishes women everywhere. Militarization, environmental degradation, heterosexist State practices, religious fundamentalisms, sustained migrations of peoples across the borders of nations and geopolitical regions, environmental crises, and the exploitation of women’s labor by capital all pose profound challenges for feminists at this time. (Mohanty, 2003: x) The task for this book is to examine questions of representation in the theatre productions discussed, acknowledging the wider global movements and influences, but also the importance of the politics of place. Diaspora studies, part of the field of cultural studies, is able to bring these ideas together by focusing on the specifics of place, while also seeing the global patterns and interconnections that move beyond those of the former empire. As Werbner and Fumanti indicate: Diaspora studies have long emphasised the role and power of hybrid works to challenge or transgress fixed, essentialising imaginaries of the nation.Three authors in particular have contributed significantly to this debate:  [Homi] Bhabha, [… Stuart] Hall and [… Paul] Gilroy. All three stress the fluid, contingent nature of national identity. (Werbner and Fumanti, 2013: 152) Hence, the focus for this chapter is on writings from diaspora and cultural studies, with elements of postcolonial theory, to encompass these differing cultural movements and discourses. The next three sections will interrogate the key terms of ‘diaspora’, ‘identity’ and ‘representation’, considering how they are situated within the context of the argument in the book.

Diaspora Sociologist Avtar Brah has been a leading figure in diaspora studies. She explains the different ways that ‘home’ is experienced by the diasporic subject: Home is a mythic place of desire in the diasporic imagination. In this sense it is a place of no return … On the other hand, home is also about the lived experience of a locality. […] When does a location become home? What is the difference between ‘feeling at home’ and staking claim to a place as one’s own? It is quite possible to feel at home in a place and, yet, the experience of social exclusions may inhibit public proclamation of the place as home. (Brah, 1996: 193) This offers a distinction between the ‘homeland’ of the Indian subcontinent that has been left behind, and the ‘home’ of the diaspora in Britain, where this notion of

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‘home’ contains multiple and often contradictory experiences. There is also a distinction of ‘home’ between the first generation who left the ‘homeland’, and may still have a particular nostalgic connection to the past in terms of time and place, and the second generation who were born or grew up in the diasporic location, and whose connection to the ‘homeland’ is different than that of their parents. The idea of the longed-​for ‘homeland’ that has been left behind, and still yearned for, is embodied in Salman Rushdie’s well-​known description of his writing about India in Midnight’s Children while living in Britain, and how his creation of the imaginary ‘homeland’ of India is constructed, created and distorted by memory of the past: [W]‌hat I  was actually doing was a novel of memory and about memory, so that my India was just that: ‘my’ India, a version and no more than one version of all the hundreds of millions of possible versions. […] But if we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge –​which gives rise to profound uncertainties –​that our physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind. (Rushdie, 1991: 10) This indicates that an important part of the diasporic imaginary is that of memory, and a constructed memory of a past place/​time of the mythologised ‘homeland’ seen through a nostalgic lens of longing for what has been lost. Cultural geographer Divya Tolia-​Kelly extends this idea of memory to being a ‘re-​memory’, which she has developed from Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987). She explores this particularly through looking at the artefacts that can be found in homes belonging to South Asian communities in Britain, and how this connects to the re-​membering of the past ‘homeland’: ‘[re-​memory] is a resource for the sustenance of a sense of self that temporarily connects to social heritage, genealogy, and acts as a resource for identification with place’ (Tolia-​Kelly, 2004: 316). In looking at how memory operates through visual and material culture to establish this identification with place, she examines the objects that were chosen to be brought to the new home of the diaspora from the ‘homeland’, and how these give a sense of identification with that past in the present, as the memories ‘activated through these cultures in the home are considered as essential in discourses of heritage, which are significant for the South Asian diasporas’ (op. cit.: 314). This aspect of a nostalgic re-​memory through objects and visual images therefore functions as a means to shape identity: Re-​memory bridges notions of transnationalism, with the effects on individual and collective consciousness that informs new identities and new processes of identification. These flows across continents inscribe re-​memories that allow for the post-​colonial memories of migration to be figured through processes of identifying with a social heritage and sense of enfranchisement to various lands and collective memories of the journey. Precipitates of

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re-​memory allow us to view, imagine and connect with this dynamic post-​ colonial consciousness, dialectically formed through memories of these other worlds and pasts, as they are figured within Britain. (op. cit.: 327) The use of these types of objects and images is also often seen in the theatre productions examined in this book, where props on stage consist of items from the subcontinent which act as both a marker of identity and recognition to indicate the ‘authentic’ Asian-​ness of the character and setting, as well as a means for the characters to interact with them in differing ways to show their connection to the imagined ‘homeland’ and how this is integrated into the new ‘home’. These objects may have a particular connection to religion and ritual ceremonies which transform the space of ‘home’ into one that encompasses the sacred space from the previous ‘homeland’ and thereby transforms the ‘home’ into a sacred space itself, indicated by social anthropologist Pnina Werbner: The rituals that immigrants celebrate in distant and alien places are usually elaborated with cultural images and objects derived from their homelands. This transfer of images from one cultural context to another is an evident feature of the migration process. […] [H]‌ome is sacralized with religious artefacts and landscaped with significant trees and plants through which immigrants renew their connections to home. (Werbner, 2012: 220) The use of religious ceremonies and ritual events is seen in a range of the productions discussed, from the brief representation of the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Bombay Dreams, through to the range of wedding and pre-​wedding ceremonies used as the dramaturgical structure for Rifco’s The Deranged Marriage, as well as an ‘authentic’ wedding in the Punjab in Britain’s Got Bhangra. The use of religious icons and visual images in Bend It Like Beckham: the musical make this sacralising of the home very apparent, as a large image of Guru Nanak is flown in to cover a central part of the outline of the set of the Bhamra’s house, as is discussed in Chapter 5, creating a merging of secular and religious imagery representing the inner conflict of Jess between the modernity of British life versus the traditional ways brought over from India. Religious objects including statues, pictures and puja offerings are also often seen on stage, and as Werbner states above, there can sometimes be natural objects such as plants and trees which become the embodiment of the nostalgia towards the imagined ‘homeland’. In the 2015 version of The Deranged Marriage, there is a tree on the set outside the house which was planted by Sona’s late father, seen in Figure 2.2. This tree becomes the representation of not just the left and lost India, but also the lost father, as his memory is made present through the tree. Sona is seen stroking this tree at the beginning, hearing the story of Heer and Ranja, itself a classic story of lost love, and religious objects are placed on or around the tree at points during the performance. Sona speaks to the tree, saying ‘I miss you’,

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scene from The Deranged Marriage with the tree seen to the right of the balcony. Source: David Fisher, courtesy of Rifco Arts. FIGURE 2.2  A

indicating the lost presence of her father, as well as her inherited past of India that she has only in re-​memory through the tree. At the end of the play, petals fall from the tree representing approval of Hema and Mahesh’s wedding, evoking sympathetic noises of pleasure from the audience. The tree as the imaginary object-​from-​ the-​homeland evokes the re-​memory of both the lost India and father through a display of nostalgia and sentimentality that brings the past into the present in an imagined way, and transforms the British house into a British Asian home. Just as with objects, forms of cultural production are also brought over from the ‘homeland’ to become part of the re-​memory of ‘home’. Performance forms such as music and dance can become key in the forming of the diasporic identity, also resulting in contestations over the notion of ‘authenticity’ and ‘purity’ as was discussed in Chapter 1. Films from India have been a very significant means for re-​ memory and the process of identification in the foreign land of the diaspora, and the changes in the meaning of the films across different generations is also important to consider, as Werbner suggests: For the older immigrant generation these films are a source of authentic images set in a safe, ‘pure’, respectful, sexually modest cultural frame. Against that, young viewers are attracted by Bollywood’s colourful and musical aesthetic qualities of stardom, dance and song while often distancing themselves from cinematic plots. (Werbner, 2013: 323)

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This indicates the different readings and forms of identification that the films have for different generations, and forms part of the discourse on inter-​generational conflict in terms of tradition and authenticity versus modernity and adaptation. Of course, adaptation is at the very heart of the migrant experience of the first generation as well, and is inherent in the conceptualisation of diasporic communities. The process of adaptation is both a reality and a metaphor for moving from one country and culture to another, and needing to find a different way of being in that new home. Adjustment is required across all areas of life, including language, food, living spaces, education, law, family and community connections and culture. Jatinder Verma makes a clear connection between the experience of adaptation as part of immigration, and why this is reflected in the process of adaptation in theatre for South Asian artists: Asians –​by the act of immigration –​are in themselves ‘translated’ or transformed people. For the Asian artist to transform a given text is therefore to do no more than give a voice to what is being done by the act of living in Britain. (Verma, programme note to Tartuffe, National Theatre, 1990, in Peacock, 1999: 183) This process of adaptation in performance is seen not only in translations and adaptations of plays, whether of English texts set in India or vice versa, but also in changes to ‘traditional’ forms of music and dance, as was discussed in the sections on Bollywood and Bhangra in the previous chapter. Graham Ley extends this idea of adaptation to what he names ‘cultural adaptation’, which can be used to articulate the experience of diasporic communities in the process of creating cultural expression that uses adaptation as a means to articulate their condition and identity: ‘when we look back in the modern period, we encounter a vast and complex impression of cultures changing and adapting, one that combines the material conditions of life with what we call the arts’ (Ley, 2015: 27). Ley asserts that theatre itself is a form of adaptation, a ‘derivative medium’ that ‘comes into being through a process of adaptation of these sources, grand narratives of their respective cultures. Specifically, what is happening in theatre is embodiment, the impersonation for a live audience of known characters from a known story’ (op. cit.: 28).What this also acknowledges is that theatre, like all art forms, has undergone a process of change and adaptation in its history and development: it is not fixed and unchanging, but rather fluid and adaptive. This process of adaptation and change of cultural forms can be resisted by the first generation of migrants who want to hold on to that form in an unchanged way in order to preserve the memory of the imagined ‘homeland’, leading to debates around ‘authenticity’ and ‘purity’ discussed in Chapter 1. However, it is also important not to fall into the trap of assuming that this is a neat, all-​encompassing equation of first generation = tradition and conservatism, and second and subsequent generations = modernity and newness. This is part of the danger of the trope of inter-​generational conflict that

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will be discussed in the section on the markers of identity as being a residue of imperialist discourse. The reality may be far more complicated where the second and subsequent generations, in the search for a sense of a distinct identity, can establish a reactionary view of wanting to hold on to traditions and uphold purity even more so than their parents: Second generation migrant youth, excluded from key domains of immigrant decision making, often choose creative, transgressive, or innovative cultural routes. Although some may be critical of the conservatism of the migrant generation, others become hyperconservative, to the point of reinventing culture and religion. Clearly then, the translocation of culture in the migration process is not automatic, a matter of nostalgic clinging to ‘tradition’, but the product of locally grounded power struggles, often gendered and generational. (Werbner, 2012: 217) Processes of adaptation through diasporic generations, then, can result in differing degrees of change and preservation. Forms may be held on to and fixed by the communities in Britain as a way of protecting identity and culture, despite those same traditions changing in India. Musician Kuljit Bhamra gives an example of this concerning the ceremonies surrounding Asian weddings in the UK which have become established as ‘the norm’, even though these may now be different to practices in India: Bollywood star Ruhan Kapoor (son of playback singer Mahendra Kapoor) came from Mumbai as a guest to attend my daughter’s wedding in April last year [2016]. He sat with his wife and son through all the traditional ceremonies and I noticed him beaming constantly during the sangeet party preceding the wedding. ‘Brother, this is lovely’, he remarked. ‘We don’t do these things in India any more!’ […] I realised how us BritAsians had created our own ‘time machine’ of traditions and culture. We had created home away from home, but in so doing, we had become more Indian than those in India! We had created our own satellite-​bubble of a preserved culture from decades ago. (Bhamra, 2017) This ‘satellite-​bubble’ shows that there can be a desire to hold on to tradition more strongly in the diaspora across all generations, in contrast to the way it can change and adapt in India. Conversely, the process of cultural adaptation can also create new traditions and forms in the diaspora which become established as cultural practices amongst the communities, and in the transnational flow of culture, then migrate back to India where they likewise can become a new means of performance that is soon established as a ‘normal’ practice. Bhamra wrote the music

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for the song ‘Rail Gaddi’, performed by Mangal Singh and released in 1987. This British Bhangra song begins with the instruments imitating the sound of a train gathering speed, leading to a fast rhythm. The song began to be played at weddings, mainly those of the Punjabi communities, and this led to the practice of guests forming a long line, pretending to be a train, and dancing round the hall to the song in the party after the wedding ceremony. This soon spread around the country as a tradition at weddings, and subsequently then moved to India where it is also being danced this way at weddings and in films. It was performed in this neo-​traditional form at the wedding party scenes in both The Deranged Marriage and Bend It Like Beckham: the musical, establishing a strong sensibility of British Asian-​ness and specifically Punjabi-​ness through the performance of a familiar ritual invented in the diaspora that is now part of the format of the ‘traditional’ wedding. As stated previously, adaptation can become a core strategy for South Asians making theatre in Britain, as can be seen in the productions discussed in Chapters 3 and 4, and the process of adaptation of source texts and material can operate in a transnational flow between Britain and India in different ways, particularly regarding the use of forms, aesthetics and sequences from Bollywood films. There are adaptations of a Western text transported to an Indian context, as is seen in Tara Arts’s Kanjoos, a translation and adaptation of Molière’s The Miser transposed from seventeenth-​century France to modern India, and in Tamasha’s Wuthering Heights, transported from Yorkshire to the deserts of eighteenth-​century Rajasthan. These adaptations, or transadaptations as I discuss in Chapter 4, keep the core of the original source, while aiming to create new meanings and readings of them through the ‘Bollywoodisation’ of the texts, as well as the new location of India as opposed to western Europe, but still framed through the aesthetics and ideas of the British South Asian theatre metier. Another process of adaptation is the movement of culture the other way from India to Britain, particularly in the form of the re-​staging of song and dance sequences from Bollywood films in productions on the British stage. Both Fourteen Songs and Bombay Dreams keep their setting in India, but though the staging of the song and dance sequences from the films may be similar, they are also adapted to suit the context of the play and the diaspora in Britain. Bombay Dreams contains a sequence of the very famous song ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’ from the film Dil Se which is set on a train in the original film, and performed on a moving platform in the stage production. However, there is a pleasure in recognition and familiarity for the audiences that know the film and song very well in seeing it performed ‘live’ in front of them. As discussed in Chapter 3, this song in the film had also gained familiarity amongst non-​Asian audiences, and so was a highlight in the production, even if the narrative pretended it was from another film altogether: the deception did not detract from the enjoyment and recognition of the spectacle. To repeat from Ley earlier, cultural adaptation in theatre ‘is embodiment, the impersonation for a live audience of known characters from a known story’ (Ley, 2015: 28), and the embodiment and liveness of the film sequence on stage evokes re-​memory and pleasure for the audience familiar with the original.

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Identity/​ies, hybridity and ambivalence The discussion of British South Asian theatre productions and practitioners must inevitably take into account the idea of ‘identity’. For some second-​generation artists, the nostalgic looking back to the homeland of India of the first generation was replaced by the investigation of identity as they negotiated their positioning in Britain. The investigation of identity is inherent for those living in what postcolonial theorist Homi Bhabha describes as the ‘third space’, the ‘inbetween’ or ‘interstitial’ space of the diaspora, where these ‘inbetween’ spaces ‘provide terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood –​singular or communal –​that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration and contestation, in the act of defining the idea of society itself ’ (Bhabha, 1994: 2–​3). Through inhabiting the inbetween, essentialised or singular categories of identity are challenged and need to be reframed as multiple and intersectional: The move away from the singularities of ‘class’ or ‘gender’ as primary conceptual and organizational categories, has resulted in an awareness of the subject positions  –​of race, gender, generation, institutional location, geopolitical locale, sexual orientation –​that inhabit any claim to identity in the modern world. (op. cit.: 1) The term ‘identity’, along with the related terms ‘community’ and ‘culture’, have been challenged and revisioned to move from a sense of the singular that essentialises an individual often through older anthropological models of the ‘bounded’ individual, community or culture, and instead acknowledges the multiple positions and forms of identification. In this way, identity becomes identities, and likewise with communities and cultures, where these are multiple, in flux, emergent and relational, rather than singular and fixed. As Stuart Hall indicates, ‘[f]‌ar from being eternally fixed in some essentialised past, [cultural identities] are subject to the continuous “play” of history, culture and power’ (Hall, 1990: 225). For Avtar Brah, identity ‘is a multi-​faceted and context-​specific construct. [It] is neither fixed nor singular; rather it is a constantly changing relational multiplicity’ (Brah, 1996: 193). Claire Alexander expands on this, saying: Rather than a unitary or stable whole, then, identity becomes something that is always in process, multiple and complex. The focus is not on bounded cultures and communities, but on networks, border zones and boundary crossings, where individual and collective identities are challenged and transformed. Central to this creation are the structures of power and inequality that intersect and constrain subordinated identities, but do now wholly determine the forms of their imagination or their resistance. Identities become open ended, unpredictable and often ambiguous in the ways they appear and are lived through. (Alexander, 2006: 269)

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Pnina Werbner articulates why the move from ‘identity’ to ‘identities’ is especially significant for diaspora or transnational communities: Given that transnational migrant communities are not fixed or clearly demarcated social entities, but are fluid, situational, context-​specific, and permeable, and given also that they interpenetrate and cross-​cut one another depending on whether the analytic lens is directed to religious, national, linguistic, or regional divisions, it follows that the cultures of immigrant communities are multiple and sometimes conflicted. Moreover, ‘culture’ may be used to refer to quite different expressions of transnational migrant cultural performance, from personally focused domestic or healing rituals in the home to collective, public religious or ethnic celebrations and mass consumption of imported films and music. Culture may allude to popular or high culture, and it includes both locally created diasporic aesthetic cultural products—​novels, films, music, visual arts—​and the imported products of transnational culture industries. (Werbner, 2012: 216) In acknowledging that ‘identity’ is multiple and in process, it is as important to acknowledge the same for the ideas of ‘community’ and ‘culture’. The way of looking at community has been challenged in the past few decades to similarly articulate that it is vital to not fix a homogenised label of ‘a community’ that can imply a group of people who align themselves in one way, and have always done, but that the sense of communities and belonging is multiple and fluid according to the time, place and context. Similarly, with the term ‘culture’, so open in meaning, which can be used to refer to ethnic groups as a ‘culture’, the practices that they undertake in their everyday life, and the forms of cultural production that they make. If taking the idea of ‘culture’ as forms of performance, such as are discussed in this book, the process of multiplicity and fluidity is certainly present in the notion of ‘adaptation’ discussed previously, and how this relates to the sense of identity/​ies. One of the means by which a diasporic artist creates a form of performance that embodies this multiple sense of identities is often described as ‘fusion’, or the development of a ‘hybrid’ form. This notion of ‘hybridity’ is another important term used by Homi Bhabha to signify the inbetween-​ness of the postcolonial subject, where being at the borders between two cultures or ethnicities produces another key term of ‘ambivalence’, of a response to something that is the experience of both one thing and another at the same time. This hybridity and ambivalence leads to a disruption of the ‘normal’ or hegemonic categorisations and expectations of the ‘other’, and so can operate as a postcolonial strategy for creating performance which challenges those singular representations through offering new ways of seeing the ‘other’ which destabilises the essentialised stereotype. Bhabha’s use of the terms ‘hybridity’ and ‘ambivalence’ has been highly important in the development of postcolonial thinking of representations of the ‘other’. However, I would like to offer a development of these terms which intend to retain

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the political dimension of Bhabha’s ideas, but extend them beyond the postcolonial into the transnational, acknowledging a greater range of relations at play in the global context. Bhabha based much of his ideas in developing the work of Edward Said on Orientalism by incorporating aspects of Derrida, Lacan and psychoanalysis, focusing on the relationship between coloniser and colonised. In a transnational context, this relationship is still present in the South Asian communities in Britain with the legacy of imperialism, however, there are other relationships beyond this that need to be taken into account. ‘Hybrid’ is also borrowed from a biological term for cross-​breeding, which can imply that there are two essentialised ‘beings’ that are mixed together to create the hybrid. This not only has problematic connotations of ‘mixed race’ when referring to individuals which resonates with narratives of biological definitions of ‘race’, but when transferred to cultural productions which are described as ‘hybrid’ in form, in other words a mixing of different forms, this can likewise imply that these forms were themselves singular and fixed before they were ‘mixed’. This is also the problem with the much-​used word ‘fusion’ that can suggest two ‘pure’ or fixed forms that have been mixed together, and often refers to the fusing of a Western and non-​Western form, thus reinforcing the binary of ‘othering’, particularly seen with the term ‘World’ as in ‘World Music’ or ‘World Dance’. The implication that the forms being fused into a hybrid are ‘authentic’ and fixed denies that these forms are often themselves a mixture that has evolved over time, and so no more ‘pure’ than the ‘hybrid’. Similarly, with the term ‘ambivalence’, meaning a response to something or someone that is a feeling of conflicting and often contradictory emotions such as love and hate, desire and repulsion, also reinforces the binary nature of oppositions and the colonial gaze on the coloniser, which can restrict the different levels of readings of performances created in a transnational age. In order to address these concerns, I have chosen to use the term ‘composite’ or ‘composition’ instead of ‘hybridity’ or ‘fusion’, and ‘multivalent’ instead of ‘ambivalent’. The idea of a performance being a composite piece that brings a varying number of different elements together means that this can move beyond being a fusion of two forms that are ‘complete’ or ‘authentic’, and instead can draw on many kinds of forms and traditions that are themselves multiple and fluid and used as a resource in the performance. The term ‘composition’ also suggests that this is a process of making, and therefore also one of fluidity, rather than a ‘fusion’ as a noun which suggests a finished object that itself becomes singular. Similarly, in order to move beyond the binary opposites implied in ‘ambivalent’, I use the term ‘multivalent’ to suggest that there can be many different readings and responses to a play or character depending on the positioning of the audience or reader and the context of the performance. These two terms aim to extend Bhabha’s ideas from the postcolonial into a more complex and multiple transnational arena, while retaining the political imperative of postcolonial discourse which is still vital in understanding the power relationships present in the cultural productions. The use of ‘composite’ and ‘multivalent’ are appropriate to correlate with the understanding of identities, communities and cultures as being multiple, fluid and relational, and are a means to

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analyse the representations of individuals and communities in the plays.This notion of representation in different forms is discussed in the next section.

Representation Representation can operate in different ways in cultural productions. It can mean a representing, speaking for or standing in for something in order to represent it, as Malik suggests, ‘someone/​thing is being represented through or by someone/​thing’ (Malik, 2002: 24). Cochrane and Robinson succinctly summarise that to ‘represent means variously to stand for, to speak for, to fill the place of or to embody another or others’ (Cochrane and Robinson, 2016: 2). Representation can also be a process through which an image is reproduced. In this way, it is not about the ‘real’, but instead a portrayal through an expressive process of communication, as Malik further states, drawing on ideas from Stuart Hall, ‘far from simply reflecting or presenting “reality”, the work of representation does, in fact, (at least partially) construct reality and, more than that, serves an important role in how social relations develop and in how ideologies are constructed’ (Malik, 2002: 24). For Hall himself, representation is inherently connected to ideology, which he defines as ‘those images, concepts and premises which provide the frameworks through which we represent, interpret, understand and “make sense” of some aspect of social existence’ (Hall, 1981: 31). With representation and ideology operating as a generating cycle, what we see shapes what we think and how we act, as Richard Dyer states, ‘How we are seen determines how we are treated, how we treat others is based on how we see them. How we see them comes from representation’ (Dyer, 1993: 1). This becomes particularly significant when looking at representations of the racialised ‘other’, and how that ‘other’ has been portrayed in forms of cultural production. One way that the hegemonic ideology of a nation-​state seeks to reinforce the racial ‘otherness’ of ethnic groups is through their portrayal using stereotypes, which are ‘social constructs designed to socially construct’ (Malik, 2002: 29). The repetition or reproduction of the representation over time establishes the stereotype which becomes the perceived social reality of an ethnic group. Malik points out, echoing Hall’s own investigation of representations of Black communities in popular culture in the 1970s and 1980s, that these are ‘crude simplifications that select, reduce and essentialize the definition of a type of person, event or institution with the effect of popularizing and fixing the difference of the original “type” ’ (op. cit.: 28). This forming of stereotype representations of South Asians in Britain will be examined further in the section on the performance of comedy below, and is further complicated in the argument of this book due to the use of stock characters and plots within Bollywood films themselves, which are then replicated on stage in Britain. There is clearly a relation between form and content, and the question is whether there is a shift in both form and content in the transadaptation from film to stage, and India to the UK, which can subvert the stereotype portrayals of the characters, and produce new meanings and readings. The ability to offer a subversion may in part be determined by familiarity with the conventions of Bollywood

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films, with the heightened character types, emotions and plots, and exaggerated use of melodrama and comedy. Lack of familiarity might reinforce the dominant representations of ‘otherness’ and ‘Indian-​ness’ in the white imaginary that shapes the perceived reality of the diasporic community, and treats them accordingly. The establishment of these stereotypes may then also become the way in which the communities represent themselves, in order to conform to audience expectations. This leads into another area of representation that is useful to consider, which is the idea of the ‘burden of representation’. By this, I mean the way in which an ethnic minority individual may find themselves in a position where they (may be forced or expected to) represent or speak for ‘the community’, and likewise when a theatre production made by a South Asian artist or company is perceived as the ‘authentic’ representation of those communities, and therefore what they themselves approve of and how they wish to be seen. In this way, ‘[p]‌articular community voices are selected as “representative” of broader migrant streams, or more likely now, “community cohesion”, and as a way of reinforcing dominant narratives’ (Gould and Qureshi, 2013: 139). Gerd Baumann points to the way that the named ‘community leaders’, whether elected from within or outside the community, take on the position of representation: ‘Community leaders’, working on the premiss [sic] of having to ‘represent’ whole ethnic-​cum-​cultural ‘communities’, must underpin their efforts by demanding and gaining respect for the ‘culture’ concerned. This ‘culture’ must be represented as a monolithic body of lifestyles and convictions, hallowed by ‘custom’ and shared among all ‘their’ constituents. (Baumann, 1997: 221) In wanting to appear to offer a space to the minority voice, the dominant institutions (government, media, etc.) can select a community representative who is ‘used’ regularly to become the voice of the communities to the wider public, particularly if what that individual is saying fits in with the dominant discourse, or is a familiar figure to the public. Jatinder Verma has become one of these figures often seen in the media, sometimes speaking about social issues affecting South Asians beyond theatre. Similarly, this may be reflected in the ‘token’ ethnic minority theatre company board member appointed to fulfil an equality and diversity quota. That person then takes on the ‘burden’ of being the representative for all ‘others’, and is expected to speak to equality and diversity issues for all communities under that label, and this can also marginalise their ability to speak to other wider concerns, as well as limit the visibility and power to transform the ethnic make-​up of such institutions. I  have experienced this myself, where I have been the only ethnic minority member of the board of a theatre or arts organisation: where I feel the ‘burden of representation’ of having to speak for all non-​ white people as part of an arts organisation because if I don’t, no-​one else

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will, and as the expectation is that I will speak to those issues, it means no-​one else has to, and this also limits what I feel able to say. (Daboo, 2017) The ‘burden of representation’ can also be applied to the theatre productions themselves, putting pressure on their makers to represent South Asian communities in particular ways to conform to expectations. The ‘burden of representation’ was mentioned in Chapter  1, asking if the identity marker of Bollywood is now an essential ingredient for making a theatre performance properly ‘Indian’, and also as stated above in relation to the stereotypes from social comedy becoming the dominant forms of representation that South Asian artists themselves must conform to. This is often imposed by residual white imperialist constructions and beliefs as to what this representation should be, and can be reinforced through the negotiations of public funding. Colin Chambers states that ‘there can be continuing unease at the compromises involved’ (Chambers, 2011:  180) with minority ethnic theatre companies engaging with funding institutions that are part of the dominant, and white, structures in the cultural industries. As he continues, for ‘black and Asian artists, there was inevitably a tension with the power-​brokers in British culture, who operated by narrow and constricting categories’ (ibid.). South Asian theatre practitioner Vayu Naidu offers a disturbing example of this external categorisation in relation to a play co-​produced by her company, Mistaken … Annie Besant in India in 2007, which was written by Rukhsana Ahmad and directed by Chris Banfield. The play focuses on Besant’s time in India between 1916 and 1933, exploring complex issues of empire, adoption, cultural identity and loss. When the play was performed in India, the audiences ‘realised that imperialism was a complex process of individuals defying policies within both ranks –​coloniser and colonised’ (Naidu, 2009: 232). However, the play, and her own positioning as a South Asian artist with an imposed ‘burden of representation’, took a different turn when it was later performed in Britain: Sadly, the Arts Council England London lead Theatre Officer for Vayu Naidu Company at the time (2006–​2007) could not see the metatext of theatre. Carrying the white man’s burden as an apologist for imperialism, he fundamentalised the play as an embarrassment –​because he had seen it in praise of Annie and imperialism. The seer that cannot engage with a debate on the complexity of imperialism disengages with a vital element of all theatre –​the experience of storytelling. This led to a funding cut (54%) for the company following the Arts Council’s spending review decision of making and cutting grants to theatres and companies in December 2007. (ibid.) The form of representation in the play, and that it was not perceived by the assessor as offering a suitable countering to imperialism in his opinion, from his own hegemonic viewpoint, resulted in a cut in funding, which is a cut in visibility and voice

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of the communities. Thus, contesting forms and processes of representation, and who is representing whom, and whose representation it is, needs close consideration to unpack the complex ways that South Asians are represented to themselves and others in the theatre. The following section will explore questions of representation and identity through examining the complex use of comedy in popular culture through mainstream productions in television, and how this may in turn shape representations in the theatre.

Comedy –​a very British Asian humour? Comedy’s job is to make people laugh. I mean, we were always at great pains to sort of not become THE voice and it’s difficult because we were THE voice for a time … And probably still if you look at it. Goodness Gracious Me and The Kumars at Number 42 are the only access a lot of Middle England white people have to Asians. (in Ducray, 2004) This statement was made by the late Sharat Sardana who had been a writer for many of the sketches on Goodness Gracious Me with his writing partner Richard Pinto, including the famous ‘Going Out For an English’ sketch, and creating the characters of the more-​English-​than-​the-​English Indian couple, the Coopers (Kapoors). His comment points to the important place that Goodness Gracious Me had in defining the representation of South Asians for a mainstream white audience, even if this was not the intention. Sociologist Sarita Malik also acknowledges the important part that the programme had in shaping representations for Asian and non-​Asian audiences since then: British-​Asian social comedy involves working with narrative themes and visual forms that are in accordance with the audiences’ (both Asian and non-​Asian) now well-​established taste of what the hegemonic authentic Indian constitutes within South Asian popular culture. This is often in line with the proven conventions that have found success in mainstream cinema but also on British television, most notably with the BBC’s hit comedy sketch show, Goodness Gracious Me (BBC2 1998–​ 2001). This British-​ Punjabi led sketch-​ comedy series ‘crossed over’ to an eighty-​five per cent White viewing audience. (Malik, 2013: 522) Certainly, the programme marked a shift from previous representations of South Asians on television, and is an intervention into the dominant whiteness of television comedy. However, Sardana’s point about it becoming ‘THE’ voice is pertinent and raises the question about whether a particular form of humour has become dominant in South Asian comedy, and if this has transferred from the television into theatre productions in order to conform to that perceived voice as ‘THE’ way to represent the communities on stage.

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Comedy can produce multivalent readings and meanings that may appear to both transgress and reinforce hegemonic stereotypes. It can play a particular part in shaping the identities and representations of a diaspora due to comedy itself often creating an ‘inbetween’ or ‘third’ space, which can play with unsettling the expectations of the ‘norm’. Rainer Emig uses Bhabha’s idea of the ‘third space’ to examine British South Asian comedy, while also suggesting that this needs to be questioned carefully to ensure that the space does not fall into a trap of conforming to an imperialist representation: The created space must itself be challenged, subverted or constructed without unbroken reference to supposed certainties. Failure to do so would merely place the complex identities that are meant to be articulated in a slightly different cage, that of reversed stereotypes and clichés. (Emig, 2010: 188) Malik suggests that it is this inbetween-​ness in the comedy in Goodness Gracious Me that extends into wider transnational influences that offers the potential for overturning the norms and stereotypes: it was precisely this ‘in-​betweenness’ of cultural hybridity that was being used to emphasize the logic of fusion over the logic of friction.The new ethnicities were not so much between two cultures as something new arising from both; occupying hybrid spaces rather than being excluded from both. […] Their reappropriation of the vernacular, cultural signs and music from the USA, the Caribbean and the Indian sub-​continent drew on different sources, politics and experiences, and was refusing to be pinned down in any simple or definitive way. (Malik, 2002: 118, 119) The unsettling of expectations of the inbetween which is neither one thing nor another, is what can create the humour through the unexpected, or the familiar seen in an unfamiliar way, which can overturn the stereotype to create something new. This was done in the show through the team playing with the stereotypes and inverting or reframing them. However, Emig’s concern of examining the third space to ensure that it is not unintentionally still performing the hegemonic ideology is echoed by Malik: Part of the trick of the series is the way the comedy team ‘go inside the stereotype’, often reverting to it, thus inadvertently raising the question, ‘When is a stereotype not a stereotype?’ Because these stereotypes are negotiated by Asians and deliberately subverted through visual puns, spectacle and parody, can we safely say that racist readings are not gleaned from the text? (op. cit.: 103) This conflicting question of representation in comedy is important to consider in the productions discussed in this book, especially as this particular form of

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comedy is often based in the genre of humour that is found in Bollywood films, and imported into the stage productions. As discussed in Chapter 1, the composite nature of Bollywood encompasses forms of physical and verbal comedy, along with melodrama, from a range of different types of performance forms from India, where the comedy is often exaggerated using slapstick, corny puns, large facial expressions and gestures and heightened character types, which could be seen as ‘stereotypes’, though as suggested in Chapter  1 in the context of the films and theatre forms, do not operate in quite the same way. When this form of comedy is transferred and adapted to Britain on stage, those not familiar with the style of excess from the films could read the characters and situations as reinforcing stereotypes rather than transgressing them. This use of comedy from Bollywood films is only part of the way that British South Asian humour and comedy has developed. It is the particular sensibility of being Asian in Britain that itself has created the way that comedy is used in popular culture, drawing on styles from Bollywood as a resource, as well as forms of British comedy, particularly the sketch-​show format, and situations from the diasporic experience of life in Britain for the second generation. In this way, the form of comedy is itself a composite drawing on both Indian and British forms to create a particular type of expression that can be found on stage as well as television. The place of comedy in shaping representation in the way that South Asians are seen in Britain is important in understanding how popular culture constructs and constitutes those representations. Stuart Hall’s re-​examining of representations of minority characters on television in the 1970s and 1980s by white writers shows that the characters and situations were often reinforcing an ideology of ‘whiteness’ and a racialised representation of the characters. He suggests even a show such as Tandoori Nights (Channel 4, 1985–​1987) with Asian characters at the centre may reinforce stereotypes, and that comedy is ‘a double-​edged game, in which it is impossible to ensure that the audience is laughing with, not at, the stereotype’ (in Malik, 2002: 100). He makes a distinction between the idea of ‘racist’ and ‘racialised’ representations, stating that the term ‘racialised’ is more appropriate to understand the process involved, and Malik states this can be understood as being a ‘racialized regime of representation’ (Malik, 2002: x). There can be a tendency to look back at programmes from that era such as Mind Your Language (ITV, 1977–​1979, 1986) and label them as ‘racist’, rather than attempting to understand the construct of racialisation that can be seen through representations of the characters in the time it was made. However, the inbetween-​ness of comedy may allow for a ‘double-​edged’ ability to subvert even with a programme such as Mind Your Language. Renowned Asian actress Jamila Massey played the part of the character Jamila in the show who speaks Urdu, and struggles with learning English. Her initial portrayal as a timid housewife speaking in a ‘funny way’ could be seen as a racialised stereotype of a ‘traditional’ Asian woman at the time. However, Massey herself does not agree with this, as she says that ‘the last thing we thought we were doing was making a racist comedy’ (Massey, 2008). For her, the joke was not on the racialised portrayal of the

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characters, but rather on the English language itself, and how difficult it is to learn (ibid.). She also feels that as this was one of the few representation of Asian characters on television at the time, it was a positive intervention. This displays Hall’s ‘double-​edge’ aspect of comedy, where Massey’s reading of the programme is in contrast to the ways it can be understood now as reinforcing hegemonic representations of the ‘other’ that were prevalent at the time. The shift towards Asians representing themselves in comedy that eventually led to Goodness Gracious Me began in theatre and live performance. The Hounslow Arts Cooperative (HAC) was founded in 1980 by young artists Poulomi Desai and Hardial Rai as a socialist arts collective to challenge the establishment and representation of the British Asian experience. The group produced different types of performances, including comedy, leading to the creation of the cabaret-​style One Nation Under a Groove that was directed by Rai using workshops as a starting point. According to writer and member of HAC Ravinder Gill, this was ‘the historical beginning of Asian comedy, which we carried on doing right up to 1996–​1997’ (in Ley, 2011a: 63), by which time the shows were taking place at the Watermans Arts Centre in Brentford, where Rai had become the Cultural Development Officer in 1992. The cabaret-​style events of One Nation included music, sketches and an open mic spot. According to Gill, ‘The theme was on multiculturalism. […] We were all very anti-​racist. […] No longer were we victims, we were able to stand up and defend ourselves. We weren’t cowering. And that came through in our comedy’ (in ibid). The sketches were often satirical comments on racism and institutions that supported it in the guise of neo-​liberalism. When Rai was at the Watermans, he opened up the space for this to continue under the name One Nation Under a Groove … Innit, which featured members of HAC in addition to other Asian artists who would later become part of the mainstream Asian comedy scene, including Sanjeev Bhaskar and Nina Wadia who went on to be in Goodness Gracious Me. One Nation began to attract large Asian audiences, which led to the offer of a sketch show that became Goodness Gracious Me initially on BBC Radio 4 from 1996 to 1998, before moving to television on BBC2 from 1998 to 2001, with subsequent specials in 2014 and 2015. Having an Asian sketch show on mainstream television is certainly an intervention into the dominant whiteness of that space, and sketches such as ‘Going Out For An English’ were able to subvert stereotypes and point out racist behaviour through reversing the situation of English people going out for an Indian meal getting drunk, as well as mispronouncing names and not understanding the menu. As Meera Syal said of the show: Up until that point, people didn’t know that Indians could have a sense of humour or irony.We were always the butt of jokes, we were never the people telling the jokes. And then we were. That’s the power of humour, to be able to change people’s minds but make them laugh too. (in Majumdar, 2016)

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This ‘power of humour’ to overturn established representations of South Asians is also argued by Kaur and Terracciano: comedy’s uses as a socio-​political weapon inverts age-​old truisms and clichés based on South Asian culture, ethnicity and associated concepts. Second, it serves as an indirect means of deflecting potentially aggressive or uncomfortable situations in the diaspora context, which then can be translated for the staged performance. Third, it provides a lateral narrative of diasporic consciousness, rewriting the assumed and taken-​for-​g ranted by jettisoning it into the orbit of the ludicrous. (Kaur and Terracciano, 2006: 355) There is, however, another view on this use of comedy in mainstream popular culture. Although Goodness Gracious Me and subsequently The Kumars at Number 42 offered a means to overturn stereotypes and highlight racialised themes, the move to mainstream media also lessened the more radical politics that had been the foundation of One Nation. The concern of not offending communities, whether white or Asian, and finding ways to make a mainstream television and mainly white audience laugh, can lead to a more ambiguous positioning of the characters that may result in potentially reinforcing the stereotypes, particularly for a white audience, rather than subverting them, as Malik questions: The central question has always been one of whether images of Blackness in television comedy ‘play on’ or ‘play off ’ the long-​established Black clown stereotype, and whether we are being invited to laugh with or at the Black comic entertainer. (Malik, 2002: 92, original emphasis) For Asian audiences, recognising characters and situations that are familiar to them on mainstream television where there is usually no representation of this sort can result in pleasure and enjoyment. However, if there is not a familiarity with or recognition of the characters and situations in this way, then the representation might be seen as a stereotype rather than a new ‘third space’ creation. This establishment of a particular style of comedy adapted from the alternative scene into the mainstream also influenced the way that comedy was used in theatre productions from the late 1990s onwards, and as stated previously, mixed with the use of comedy from Bollywood films in the productions discussed in this book to create situations and characters that may be addressing issues and attempting to subvert stereotypes, but may also reinforce these in the desire to entertain and not offend audiences. However, Bollywood itself can offer a more multivalent view in the way that it generates comedy. The late playwright Parv Bancil was part of HAC and One Nation at Watermans. As will be discussed in Chapter 4, he was frustrated by his feeling that it was only possible to be commissioned to write a play if it had a Bollywood twist to it. However, he also

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acknowledged that using Bollywood as the basis for a production had the ability to attract audiences, and a potential to use the stereotypes and exaggeration in Bollywood to create work that fitted in with the type of humour and comedy that he had been exploring in HAC and at the Watermans in One Nation. His play Papa Was a Bus Conductor (1996), directed by Harmage Singh Kalirai at the Watermans, was a farce that drew heavily on Bollywood conventions to create a ‘constant satirical and farcical scenario’ (Ley, 2011a: 181) that incorporated Bollywood stereotypes with those from the British Asian experience of migration and racism. Likewise, his 1999 play Bollywood or Bust, Innit is a farce based on Bollywood conventions that bears similarities to Pravesh Kumar’s subsequent Bollywood 2000 for Rifco discussed in Chapter 5. Bollywood or Bust uses the audience’s familiarity with Bollywood films to satirise the excesses of melodrama. The play begins with a female dancer performing a famous scene from the well-​ known film Pakeezah where Meena Kumari dances on broken glass in a moment of high tension and melodrama. However, in Bancil’s version, rather than enduring the pain, the dancer skips about saying ‘Ouch! Ouch!’ (Bancil, 1999: 2). This creates a moment of humour playing on the knowledge and expectations of the high-​drama intensity in the original scene, undercut in Bancil’s reworking. At a later point, the character of Mr Chopra wants to cash in on the character of Bollywood actor Balgit ‘Bollywood’ Bhaskar’s decision to make a Bollywood film in Britain, by finding a cast for the show: Mr Chopra: I do not dream. A man must take control of his own life. Once, ‘Rent a Paki’ was a dream, now it is a reality. Look at me. Look at this wonderful place. I’ve got all the Asian actors anyone will need up on my walls. Need a battered wife for The Bill? Look no further. Need a shopkeeper? We’ve got two types: the victim and the jolly shopkeeper. Battered wife has been used too many times in The Bill? I’ve got five more that will take her place. Need one for Casualty? No problem. I can wheel them in and dust them down. […] Sometimes the parts they have these days require the actor to say more than one line. My actors are not used to this! They’ve been saying one line for so many years to remember more might take it out of them! (op. cit.: 13) Bancil is using Bollywood conventions and character types to make a satirical comment on life for an Asian actor in Britain who is forced into playing these kinds of racialised stereotypes on television as the only type of character part available to them. This echoes his own experience as a writer as well as actor: I was reminded of conversations I  had in 1986 when I  first started writing plays. I  would talk to my colleagues about the cliched stereotypes we, as British Asian actors and writers, had to suffer. As the children of the first generation of immigrants, we would still have to audition for roles as waiters

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or shopkeepers, with the comical Indian accent. We longed to see authentic portrayals of recognisable British Asian characters on TV, film and in theatre. We imagined that 20 years on, we would look back and laugh at the nonsense we had to suffer. Well it’s nearly 2009 and America has a black president. And I’m still not laughing. (Bancil, 2008a) In this way, the adaptation of aspects of Bollywood films through a British South Asian lens created a subversion of the exoticisation and colonial discourse that may be present in other uses and appropriations of Bollywood in stage productions. It also demonstrates Bancil’s familiarity with and knowledge of the films in order to make a satirical pastiche, and his acknowledgement that this would attract an audience through the use of a popular culture form, even while he also laments the overwhelming part that Bollywood plays in representations of South Asians on stage. The construction and use of comedy in theatre productions in the new millennium may also be seen in the context of the ‘conviviality’ of a neo-​liberal multicultural agenda, noted in Chapter 1 as part of Blair’s New Labour and ‘Indian Kool’. The idea of conviviality is used by Malik and Paul Gilroy in different ways, which I  adapt in the book to consider the portrayal of ‘multicultural conviviality’ that presents a happy and integrated Britain, while not addressing some of the deeper social issues that South Asian communities may face in their lives. For Malik, the development of South Asian comedy in Britain can be seen as having a particular Punjabi sensibility or flavour, in part due to the large number of second-​generation East African Punjabis who were instrumental in the development of British South Asian performance: Punjabi culture itself is commonly depicted as high-​energy, colourful, fun(ny) and convivial, typified by bhangra (Indian folk) dancing, dhol (drum) music and Bollywood film routines. Between 2002 and 2006 BBC Bollywood was introduced by the public service broadcaster as its ident, highlighting the national significance of Punjabi culture which now has proven success in ‘crossing over’ to the mainstream. British Punjabis therefore occupy a representational space marked both by distinction and inclusion. (Malik, 2013: 513) Certainly there has been a level of dominance of Punjabi-​ness through this visibility, and Bhangra has played a part in this. Even the theme music of Goodness Gracious Me is a Bhangra version of Peter Sellers’s original song, and the exaggerated comedy and high energy that is a perceived representation of Punjabi culture has been seen in television, films (e.g. Bend It Like Beckham) and subsequently in stage productions. This can establish a problematic level of community dominance amongst British South Asian practitioners which has also been refuted, however, the dominance of that East African Punjabi second generation was significant

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in  producing new cultural expressions in Britain in the 1980s, as was seen in Chapter 1 in the development of British Bhangra. This level of conviviality, Malik suggests, has become the cornerstone of comedic representations of South Asians by South Asians to a mainstream (mainly white) audience. In this way, conviviality –​the ability to live together –​is seen as a positive and happy integration of South Asians into British culture. We live side by side, and are able to enjoy and appreciate each other’s differences and humour, as long as this representation is not threatening to the dominant ideology which maintains the sense of what ‘South Asian’ or ‘Indian’ is in Britain. This portrayal of being able to live together happily is offered by Paul Gilroy in After Empire, seeing conviviality in a much more utopian way, defined as ‘the processes of cohabitation and interaction that have made multiculture an ordinary feature of social life in Britain’s urban areas and in postcolonial cities elsewhere’ (Gilroy, 2004: xi). In other words, it is a place where communities live together with our differences in a harmonious and non-​violent way. Malik, however, points out that this vision of conviviality and multiculturalism is double-​edged: There is an ambivalence involved, identified long ago by Stuart Hall in his discussion of black popular culture, which positions popular culture as a deeply contradictory space marked by struggle and the simultaneous threat of incorporation or exclusion (Hall 1993). On the one hand, when situated in the context of market forces, Gilroy suggests that what we might be getting is a ‘pastiche of multiculture that is manipulated from above by commerce’ (Gilroy 2004: 147). On the other, he maintains that convivial culture becomes a possible manoeuvre for managing the potential challenges of living with multiculture (and the interactions it offers). In spite of its contradictory politics, convivial culture for Gilroy offers the ‘ability to live with alterity without becoming anxious, fearful or violent’ (Gilroy 2004: 9 xi); it becomes a key mode through which cohabitation is held in place, though certainly not suggestive that an end to racism has occurred. (Malik, 2013: 515) These contradictions and multivalent readings are certainly present when examining comedy in the theatre productions discussed, particularly when using forms of popular culture to represent the state of a multicultural Britain today. The use of comedy and character types from Bollywood films and British South Asian mainstream humour can lead to the creation of representations in productions that are ‘safe’ to both Asian and non-​Asian audiences: they are ultimately happy characters and situations that may have conflict but this is resolved in the multicultural space, and the British Asian is presented as non-​threatening, funny, colourful and in a space where there is song, dance and spectacle. I use the terms ‘multicultural conviviality’ and ‘convivial other’ to examine characters and scenarios in the productions discussed which are ‘safe’, entertaining, conforming to expectations of a type and therefore also reinforcing the sense of ‘other-​ness’: we can live with them, but they

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are still not one of us. This fits in with Malik’s acknowledgement of the multivalent understandings of conviviality and multiculturalism, as well as my somewhat cynical response to Gilroy’s notion of a utopian convivial culture. He was writing After Empire in 2003, and at that point hoping that Britain might lead the way to establishing a convivial culture within Europe: The outrages, deaths and dogged campaigns of resistance and recognition so evident during the recent years have created just enough hope to sustain a fragile belief that a restored and healthier Britain might one day teach the rest of Europe something about what will have to be done in order to live peacefully with difference, to manage the hatreds against postcolonial and sanctuary-​seeking peoples, and to contain the murderous mischief of organized neo-​Nazis, ultra-​nationalists, and other racist groups. (Gilroy, 2004: 166) Unfortunately, this hope seems very faint 14 years later, where Britain and indeed the rest of Europe is threatened by the very forces that he felt would be contained, and the representation of conviviality on stage is not necessarily creating the means to counter this.

Markers of identity In order to bring together the ideas in this chapter, this section will explore some of the discourse surrounding the representations of South Asians in Britain, leading to what I term the ‘four markers of identity’ which will be referred to when analysing the plays in subsequent chapters. The majority of this discussion adopts a triangulation of ideas by Avtar Brah, Claire Alexander and Fauzia Ahmad in A Postcolonial People, investigating how the stereotypes of Asians established through imperialist discourse of the history of the communities in Britain post-​Second World War are still acting as the formation for the ways in which the communities are framed and discussed, and hence also part of the representation of South Asians in theatre productions and popular culture. They highlight three areas that were shaped by this discourse as overarching themes when studying and discussing South Asians in Britain: culture clash, inter-​generational conflict and the arranged marriage, and I add Bollywood and Bhangra as a fourth area to this to create the four markers of identity that can be found in the theatre productions discussed in the book. Thinking back to the history of post-​Second World War migration to Britain where communities encountered racism and conflict discussed earlier, stereotypes of Asians were established based in the residual colonial discourse. This defined Asians as the ‘natives’ who were brought over to do the jobs that the indigenous white British people did not want to do, therefore they were seen as inferior and remaining in isolation (Brah, 2006: 36). In the economic crisis following the war, the arrival of ‘immigrants’ caused friction that led to the new arrivals being blamed

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for the problems of the country, and particularly in the new inner-​city areas (op. cit., 37). Asians were perceived as smelling of curry, wearing strange clothes, practising other religions and not speaking English (ibid.). The initial policy for the new immigrants was one of ‘assimilation’, in other words that they should become ‘like us’, but when this was shown to be unsuccessful, the term was changed to ‘integration’ (op. cit.: 39), which led to the creation of the ‘race relations industry’ (op. cit.: 40) and a succession of immigration laws and race relations acts. The children of these migrants who formed the second generation were perceived to create their own set of ‘problems’ for Britain in areas of education and integration, as well as forging new urban youth cultures which changed the landscape of the country, and established new criminal and gang worlds that threatened the law and social order. This racialised view of the history of migration formed the way that the communities were perceived and studied, leading to the forming of discourse surrounding their ‘problems’ with integration that resulted in the tropes of culture clash and inter-​generational conflict. The idea of culture clash, that British South Asians are always caught between two cultures which results in a crisis of identity, acts as a way to homogenise all the communities as it implies a singular British and singular Asian culture which they are trapped between. Focusing on the idea of ‘clash’ means that there can be no possibility for cultural meetings to be productive, and the crisis of identity meant that Asian youth were perceived as being ‘disoriented, confused and atomised individuals’ (op. cit.: 53). Likewise, Alexander points out that the idea of being ‘between two cultures’ was the dominant discourse in the 1970s (Alexander, 2006: 259) and that this reinforced older anthropological models of ethnicity and community as being fixed and singular: ‘The overarching picture is of two distinct and opposed set of values –​tradition versus modernity, community versus the individual, duty versus freedom, family versus school –​that inevitably lead to “particular stress” and “contradictions” ’ (op. cit.: 260). This clash or crisis was particularly attributed to the second-​generation youth, who were growing up in Britain with parents from South Asia, which created the second trope: inter-​generational conflict, again emphasising a discourse of discontent and crisis that was blamed on the diasporic subjects themselves, rather than being as a result of racist laws and institutions. The inter-​generational conflict was also viewed as a crisis of identity for the young Asian, and ‘this explanation became a central paradigm for addressing young Asian people’s experiences’ (Brah, 2006: 54), thus reducing the complex issues for individuals to one reason from an imperialist discourse. Brah points out that ‘inter-​generational difference should not be conflated with conflict’ (ibid., italics in original), and that the reality of conflict existing between parent and child ‘was no higher than amongst white young people’ (ibid.), however, this became an established means to label and interrogate the experience of young Asians. For Alexander, the experience of being between cultures could enable a creative expression for the second generation, where they were ‘part of an ongoing and ambiguous struggle over representation, particularly through new, hybrid, forms of cultural production’ (Alexander, 2006: 264), which was seen in the

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development of the form of British Bhangra. However, young men in particular were labelled as a ‘problem’ due to the language of ‘clash’ and ‘crisis’ and associated with gangs, riots, criminal behaviour and unemployment (op. cit.: 266) and, more recently, fundamentalism. Connected to both these themes of clash and crisis is another that has become a very specific marker of Asian communities: the arranged marriage. This has evoked a fascination from the time of colonial India, where women were perceived as ‘victims’ to be ‘sold’ in marriage by their parents. This idea was transferred to Britain, where the assumption was that second-​generation Asian women would be in an inter-​generational conflict with their parents who were forcing them into a marriage they did not want, emphasising the clash of cultures. Fauzia Ahmad states: ‘Arranged marriages’ are among the main practices used to define the distinctiveness of the BrAsian in relation to other communities. Indeed, ‘arranged marriages’ symbolise BrAsians and thus continue to be commonly abstracted as a metaphor for BrAsian life-​styles. (Ahmad, 2006: 273) She points out that the difference between ‘forced’ and ‘arranged’ marriages is just beginning to be acknowledged, and that the idea of the ‘forced’ marriage is not in keeping with British values, and there is now a law against ‘forced marriage’ that was passed in June 2014. This could be seen as similar to the ‘trope of chivalry’ of the East India Company passing the anti-​Sati law in India in 1829, as part of the discourse of ‘the white man saving the brown woman from native brown men’ that formed part of the justification for colonial rule in India. Women again became the embodiment for issues of defining the nation, and also for notions of izzat (honour) and sharam (shame) within communities. Brah feels that this discourse around women and arranged marriages has increased post-​9/​11, and that ‘Unveiling the Eastern woman is, of course, a longstanding fantasy of orientalist discourses, but rarely have we seen her made into an overt centrepiece of trans-​national politics’ (Brah, 2006:  60). She suggests that this harks back to an earlier way of understanding the imperialist defining of the ‘other’, but stating that ‘Orientalism is a key dynamic within current regimes of imperialism’ (ibid.). When seen in this light, the three areas discussed appear to be part of older frames of colonialist discourse which are still present in the ways of identification and representation of South Asians in Britain. As Ahmad explains, the: study of BrAsians has been dominated by a handful of themes (‘inter-­ generational conflict’, cultural conflict and negotiations and ‘arranged marriages’), themes that have remained remarkably persistent, constituting the grammar by which BrAsian experiences are mediated and disseminated throughout society. (Ahmad, 2006: 274)

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Taking this last comment, it can certainly be seen that these three themes are present in many of the theatre plays by and about South Asians in Britain. For that reason, I am labelling them as ‘markers of identity’ in the productions, in that they relate to both issues of identity for the characters, but also identify the plays as South Asian due to the themes. To these three I am adding a fourth, which unsurprisingly in this book is that of Bollywood and Bhangra. This adds an aesthetic and cultural marker of identity to the social themes discussed. These four markers will be used as part of the analysis of the productions in the book, questioning whether the representation of South Asians is conforming to these discourses from colonial thought. Certainly, it would be difficult to think of a play by or about South Asians in Britain that does not contain at least one of these markers. A play such as Ayub Khan-​Din’s East is East, produced by Tamasha in 1996, which became one of the first plays by a British Asian writer to move into the mainstream, contains all four. It is important to state that these issues are certainly present in the lives of communities and individuals, however, when they become a marker of identity in the form of representation, the question is whether a South Asian theatre practitioner can make a play that engages with other issues, or if they are constrained to fitting within these markers and hence a residual colonialist ideology. There are related themes that emerge from the four markers of identity and the histories of diasporic migration discussed in this chapter that will be seen in the plays, particularly bearing in mind that the companies discussed were all founded by second-​generation South Asians in Britain, so they were themselves experiencing the ‘clash’ and ‘conflict’, and trying to find a new voice through theatre forms and aesthetics drawing on those from both India and the UK. The portrayal of nostalgia in particular will be a recurrent theme, and operates as a means for making a distinction and articulating the conflict between the generations, with the first generation looking nostalgically back to the life and culture of the homeland, wanting to hold on to ‘traditional’ values, as opposed to the second generation who are looking forwards rather than back, wanting to be British and ‘modern’. The elders can sometimes be portrayed as being somewhat backward and uneducated, conforming to imperialist stereotypes in the effort to create a contrast with the modern youngster brought up in Britain. On the other hand, India can be represented as the lost imaginary homeland, and a time and place of a simpler, ‘purer’ ‘authentic’ life, as seen in Britain’s Got Bhangra in Chapter 5, which contrasts with the globalised modern Britain as being a place of glitz and glamour, but also danger and debauchery where an individual can lose the sense of who they are and where they have come from. Rocky Singh, Twinkle’s friend, says to him, ‘Remember who you are’; an appeal to his crisis of identity. This line is also important in Bend It Like Beckham: the musical, spoken several times at key moments to Jess in her struggle between cultures, family and tradition, and her desire to escape into the globalised world of international football.This identity conflict was embodied in the song and dance sequence of her sister Pinky’s wedding party juxtaposed with her playing an important football match, with her family and teammates on stage at the same time representing her internal conflict, which will be discussed further in Chapter 5.

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There is also the nostalgic love of Bollywood films seen in many of the stage productions, particularly of films from the ‘golden age’ of Indian cinema in the 1940s to 1960s, with songs and dances from these films performed in the productions, creating a transnational flow of culture between India and the UK. The enactment of the films and songs onstage creates a re-​memory of the ‘homeland’ brought to and adapted in the ‘home’ of Britain. Bhangra song and dance evokes both the nostalgic re-​memory of the ‘homeland’ of the Punjab, but also the signifier of the new cultural life of Britain, seen in the narrative of Britain’s Got Bhangra which shows not just the development of the sound of British Bhangra, but also the history of the immigration and integration of South Asians into Britain. A banner held in a demonstration in response to the uprisings in Southall in 1979 depicted in Britain’s Got Bhangra bears the words ‘We are British, we belong’. The process of being British and belonging in the diaspora expressed through the song and dance of Bollywood and Bhangra will be examined in the theatre productions discussed in the rest of the book.

Notes 1 Radcliffe was the chairman of the Border Commission responsible for the drawing of the Partition line between India and the newly created Pakistan, and deciding which ­territories to award to each nation. This became known as the ‘Radcliffe Line’. 2 The Indian Workers Association was established in the UK in the 1930s by immigrants from the subcontinent who mainly had a Communist leaning. The Southall branch subsequently broke away from the UK Association, and further information on their activist and cultural activities can be found in Southall:  Birth of a Black Community by the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism and Southall Rights, published by the Institute of Race Relations in 1981.

3 BOLLYWOOD AND/​AS MUSICAL THEATRE

This chapter and the following one examine a number of stage productions since 1998 which are based on or have incorporated elements of Bollywood films and aesthetics in differing ways, focusing on the idea of adaptation, or transadaptation, which I discuss further in the next chapter. This chapter focuses on the use of Bollywood in musical theatre productions, and Chapter 4 is an examination of different approaches to the adaptation of Bollywood in plays. The placing of Bollywood on a mainstream stage offers an intervention and alternative to the dominant ‘whiteness’ usually seen in such spaces, and yet also raises questions about whether the representations of the communities are resisting and/​or conforming to hegemonic discourse. Discussing these productions raises the question of how to define ‘British South Asian theatre’, and whether there is even such a distinct category. Most of the productions discussed are by ‘Asian-​led companies’, which is the terminology used by Ley and Dadswell in their documented history of British Asian theatre (Ley and Dadswell, 2011: ix). However, some are not: Bombay Dreams and Wah! Wah! Girls are produced by white British companies, but based on stories about South Asians whether in India or the UK, have South Asians in their creative teams and cast and use languages and aesthetics from the subcontinent. Does this make them part of British South Asian theatre? And if not, then what are they? Tanika Gupta wrote the script for Wah! Wah! Girls that was co-produced by Kneehigh theatre company which is based in Cornwall, and has had no engagement with South Asian culture before this. Gupta herself has often contested her labelling as being a ‘South Asian playwright’, and has written plays on non-​Asian themes. She questions what British Asian theatre is in relation to Rafta, Rafta …, which was Ayub Khan-​Din’s adaptation of Bill Naughton’s play All In Good Time (1963) transferred to an Asian family in contemporary Bolton, and performed at the National Theatre in 2007, directed by Nicholas Hytner:

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I don’t know what [British Asian theatre] really … means. I mean Rafta, Rafta … was on at the National Theatre, directed by Nicholas Hytner  –​is that British Asian theatre? If you have a story that is Asian, does that make it Asian or does that make it theatre? (Gupta, 2008) The production was subsequently made into a film in 2012, where it reverted back to its original English title, complicating this question further. Felix Cross highlights a similar issue with labelling genre in relation to Black British theatre: In my twenty years of being in theatre … I don’t know what Black theatre means. […] Is it when Black actors get on stage? Is it when a company’s owned by Black people? Is it when it’s only a certain subject matter? Is it when it comes from a certain sensibility? Is there a different play structure? I don’t know. (in Davis, 2006: 24) Ley and Dadswell’s comment about ‘Asian-​led’ companies is important in tracing the history, and perhaps offers a distinction to Black British theatre, where recent books have tended to focus on playwrights (Brewer et al., 2015; Pearce, 2017), whereas generally books about British Asian theatre have focused on companies. This reflects that the development of companies has been very significant in the history, allowing practitioners to come together to develop ideas and make work that might not have been possible otherwise. It has also resulted in distinct styles, strategies, philosophies and core audiences for the different companies. While there have been playwrights with a body of work that it is possible to study, the work of companies has tended to be more significant within British South Asian theatre, partly because of this history, and that it is often the company directors rather than playwrights that are the spokespeople for articulating the ideas of what constitutes the more visible work made by South Asian practitioners. The particular processes and practices of the companies and practitioners are distinct, but they all tend to create new forms or approaches to theatre that draw on elements from both South Asia and the UK that is seen in language, aesthetic, theme, form, dramaturgy, design and acting style.This composite approach makes it harder to define precisely what the new form is.Vayu Naidu uses the phrase ‘Neti-​ neti’ to explain this process.The term is taken from the ‘Bhradaranayaka Upanishad of Advaita (Non-​dualism) Vedanta philosophy (c.800BC)’ and means ‘not this, not that’ (Naidu, 2009: 227). In this way, British Asian theatre is neither one thing nor another, and sits rather in Bhabha’s ‘third space’ of the diaspora that is ‘in-​between’, or as a composite form that draws on different elements. Bollywood itself could also be considered to exist as a composite form that is ‘Neti-​neti’ in the way it operates between and across different forms: ‘Many Indian films are not quite comedies, not quite dramas, not quite romances, not quite musicals, but rather mixtures of all these genres in a single three-​hour package’ (Beaster-​Jones, 2014: 5),

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and this is also often reflected in the theatre productions drawing on Bollywood in the diaspora. Both Naidu and Verma describe British Asian theatre as being a ‘theatre of migration’ and so sits between the UK and South Asia.Verma uses the term ‘Binglish’ to describe the composite of both places that is inherent in the experience of the Asian in Britain that is reflected in language and aesthetics.1 This creates an uncanny blending of the familiar and unfamiliar placed together in a new way, reflecting the migrant experience of being between two places. Verma states that the core question in his work is, ‘What is the aesthetic of a migrant theatre?’ (Verma, 2017). In his work for Tara Arts, this questioning has often been in the form of adapting both Indian and European stories and literature using his ‘Binglish’ approach to establish an aesthetic that draws on both to create something new, as will be seen in the next chapter. The creative team of Tamasha, with former directors Kristine Landon-​Smith as director and Sudha Bhuchar as adaptor and actor, as well as Sue Mayes as designer, draw on their range of skills and their experience of conducting research in India to develop new work. This is their approach in contrast to Verma’s more individualistic idea of the ‘Binglish’ initiative. Tamasha’s productions address key issues for their audiences, from the position of the Dalit caste and Partition in India, to adaptations of European texts, and new plays examining contemporary South Asian diasporic communities in Britain. These differing approaches to the idea of ‘British Asian’ within theatre show the multivalent and composite nature of approaching this subject. There is one theme that tends to be at the core of the work of the productions, particularly those incorporating Bollywood, which is that of adaptation, for which I particularly use the term ‘transadaptation’. This term articulates the process of both translation and adaptation of texts, languages, forms of performance and transferring from one medium to another to consider how this process operates in the performances, as well as the transnational movement of culture. This chapter focuses on the way that Bollywood has been adapted into the form of the Western musical theatre in the productions of Tamasha’s Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and a Funeral, and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Bombay Dreams. Though the tradition of Western musical theatre has established conventions that may seem an appropriate means to encompass Bollywood with its song and dance routines, what is seen in both productions are complex processes of transadaptation and engaging with narratives and cultural forms from India, and strategies for placing these within the context of popular entertainment in Britain.

Bollywood and musical theatre The conventions found in Bollywood films, with the use of narrative, music, song, dance, melodrama, heightened emotions and a mixture of drama and comedy, could certainly seem at first glance to be elided with those of the form of Western musical theatre which is ‘a combination of song, visual spectacle and verbal text that is performed live in theatres’ (Taylor, 2012: 1). While there is an influence of early

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Western films on the development of cinema in India, as discussed in Chapter 1, the particular composite nature of what has come to be established as Bollywood films draws on many elements including a number of theatrical forms, aesthetics and conventions from India. Therefore, the adaptation and incorporation of sequences of Bollywood films into Western musical stage productions can highlight the similarities and differences, as well as potentially appropriating the Bollywood elements into the new form and losing their distinctive quality. Audiences experience and process a large range of different ‘texts’ or sign systems when watching musical theatre, including verbal, musical, movement, gesture, setting and design, and can recognise what is happening and how the character is feeling based on a prior understanding of these conventions and codes that the sign systems together create. As Millie Taylor suggests, this relies on ‘cultural recognition of previously established conventions’ (op. cit.: 15), and these conventions are different in Bollywood, and therefore require a prior knowledge from the audience to enable them to fully read and experience what is happening in a particular moment. The question of why an audience would want to watch aspects of a film recreated live on stage has been addressed recently by musical theatre scholars examining the form of the ‘juke-​box musical’, such as Mamma Mia or We Will Rock You, where the audience already knows the songs from a different context, and so are seeing and hearing them in a new form and narrative that is simultaneously familiar. This process of adaptation: allows intertextual and personal associations in reception […].This ­contributes to the sense of familiarity and nostalgia experienced by audience members, which in turn allows them to be removed from their everyday lives, to relive fantasies and memories, and to participate in singing and dancing. (op. cit.: 152) Taylor uses Theodor Adorno’s ideas of popular culture and entertainment, saying that ‘the repetitive and formulaic character of cultural goods makes them cosy, predictable and capable of answering to the individual’s needs for security and the producer’s need for predictability in the market’ (op. cit.: 8). Certainly this sense of familiarity and ‘cosiness’, leading to a feeling of security and predictability through nostalgia and repetition, can be applied to South Asian audiences wanting to see song and dance sequences live on stage that they recognise, and take pleasure from this recognition and repetition. It is a re-​memory of the imaginary ‘homeland’ in the ‘home’ of the diaspora presented live on the stage in front of them, as well as offering the familiarity of the cinema space in contrast to the more ‘alien’ space of the theatre. This aspect of ‘liveness’, as opposed to the mediated experience of watching a film in the cinema or at home, has been discussed by Philip Auslander who suggests that the mediatised has become such a dominant form in contrast to live performance ‘that the general response of live performance to the oppression and economic superiority of mediatized forms has been to become as much like them as

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possible’ (Auslander, 2008: 7). The transadaptation of Bollywood from film to stage may seem to fit in to this idea, as well as drawing on the popular appeal of the films to attract an audience, resulting in a ‘conquering’ of the theatre space by the more familiar and assimilated one of the cinema. However, the transference into the liveness can also lead to disruptions to the conventions of the mediatised films. One interesting example of this is in the practice of the actors lip-​syncing to the songs performed by a playback singer in the films, which is the established convention as discussed in Chapter 1, leading to a ‘double-​mediatising’ which could be considered ‘strange’ to a viewer not familiar with that convention. The re-​performing of these songs ‘live’ on stage, as is usual in Western musical theatre, then offers a dilemma to the director: should the convention of the lip-​syncing remain to create familiarity for the audience who know the films, rather than conforming to the live singing that occurs in the Western tradition? Some members of the Asian audiences have expressed surprise that the actors were singing ‘live’ themselves, and even that the musicians were performing ‘live’. If the orchestra is in a pit in a large theatre, then they are not seen, and if mediatised through microphones and speakers, produce a sound that may not appear to be ‘live’ rather than a pre-​recorded track. Kuljit Bhamra has spoken of audience members not knowing that there were musicians performing the music ‘live’ for these reasons (Bhamra, 2016). The two productions discussed in this section take different approaches to this question, with Fourteen Songs keeping the mediatised familiarity of lip-​syncing combined with the liveness of the actor performing on stage, which fits in with Auslander’s point above. However, even though Bombay Dreams mainly has actors singing ‘live’ on stage, it also has songs where the actors lip-​sync to backing tracks of the original versions, which is discussed later in the chapter. The origins of British musical theatre lie in nineteenth-​century forms of popular entertainment including burlesque, music hall and pantomime, which also have established conventions of melodrama, camp and nostalgia as part of the musical theatre experience. As Robert Gordon explains, ‘[c]‌entral to the emotional impact of nineteenth-​century melodrama was the regular use of music and occasional use of songs to heighten and underscore the fluctuating emotional dynamic of the drama’ (Gordon, 2016:  33). The influence of melodrama on Indian cinema was discussed in Chapter 1, and the aspect of nostalgia has already been stated as a key feature of the diasporic experience, and so the transposition from Bollywood to British musical theatre may allow for a composite eliding of these conventions. However, in Bollywood, the exaggeration and excess, as well as the way that song and dance sequences evoke rasa in a particular way to heighten and elaborate the emotion of the character and mood of the scene, are still unfamiliar to an audience not used to those cultural conventions. The ways that the two stage productions address these issues, and develop strategies for particular audiences, is discussed in the following sections. In relation to the four markers of identity, both productions contain culture clash in the contestation between modernity and tradition, arranged marriages and, of course, Bollywood. Inter-​generational conflict is also present in Bombay Dreams, and in a different way in Fourteen Songs through its absence due to

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the representation of an idealised and conservative2 view of the family unit. I would suggest that the marker of culture clash for the diasporic communities also comes in the very form of the musicals, with both Indian and Western conventions and forms placed together on stage, and that though the setting for both productions is in India, the way that this is seen from a very British (sometimes British South Asian) perspective likewise creates its own form of performative culture clash.

From politics in theatre to Asian Kool Tamasha’s production of Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and a Funeral was first shown in 1998, a time of the establishment of ‘Asian Kool’ as part of Blair’s New Labour multicultural ‘Cool Britannia’ conviviality, mentioned in Chapter  1, leading to the ‘Indian Summer’ of 2002, of which Bombay Dreams became a part. This is far removed from the situation in Britain in 1977 when Tara Arts formed as the first established British Asian theatre company. As stated previously, this was in response to the murder of Gurdip Singh Chaggar in Southall, and the original intention of Tara was to find ways to respond to racism and give voice to the younger generation of Asians in Britain. 1976 had also seen the publication of Naseem Khan’s seminal report ‘The Arts Britain Ignores: The Arts of Ethnic Minorities in Britain’, which charted the arts practices in ethnic minority communities in Britain that were receiving no attention or funding. As a result of the report, the Arts Council instituted funding opportunities for minority theatre artists, and Tara was one of the companies that benefited from this. The initial political impetus of Tara’s philosophy and working methods changed through the 1980s, with Verma focusing more on aesthetics and form, including a short residency at the National Theatre. This move from the political was reflected more broadly in society as the label of ‘Black’, which had formerly been used as a sign of unified resistance by ethnic minority communities, was gradually broken down into smaller units of identity, suiting Margaret Thatcher’s policies of multiculturalism which aimed to ‘divide and rule’ the communities. Arts funding also played a part, as not only were artists struggling for the same pot of money, but also because ticking the ‘diversity’ box had implications for the types of production they were able to make as seen with Vayu Naidu in Chapter 2, with an increasing pressure to produce work that had a ‘popular’ appeal in order to attract larger and diverse audiences, thereby justifying the funding. By the late 1990s, ‘Asian Kool’ was in full swing. This had initially started in the fashion media and industry, appropriating elements of clothes and bodily decoration from South Asia and incorporating these into Western culture, leading to a prevalence of ‘Indian-​style’ clothing, jewellery and body adornments, adapted and filtered through a Western gaze: ‘The celebration of sarees and trainers, bindis and mehndi on the dancefloor was represented as a new hybrid metropolitan Asian culture creatively synthesising traditional and modern elements from the East and West respectively’ (Sharma, 2006: 322). Celebrities such as Madonna were ‘discovering’ Eastern philosophy and music, and wearing designer versions of Indian-​style

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outfits. Nirmal Purwar describes this as multicultural capitalism, which is ‘capitalism based on the production and consumption of cultural diversity and the marketing of packaged versions of the “exotic” –​[which] is at the cutting edge of globalized economic markets’ (Purwar, 2002: 64). Music became a particular feature of ‘Asian Kool’, with the new sounds of British Bhangra that led to the Asian Underground scene, discussed in Chapter  1, creating a new identification for the Asian youth which shifted the view of them from the uncool shopkeeper or cleaner, to being hip, colourful and ‘exotic’. This form of cultural appropriation was very much part of globalisation and new capitalism which cashed in on the orientialised ‘other’ and absorbed this into the narrative of Cool Britannia’s multiculturalism: The donning of the bindi and a fad for rhythms and ragas from the East is part of the inexorable process of capitalising on difference which marks the musical, culinary, design style and other forms of consumer production in the current period. (Kalra and Hutnyk, 1998: 340) This very fragmented and selected appropriation of South Asian culture became commodified as the ‘authentic’ flavour of the mystic East; a shift from the 1960s hippie movement to a globalised marketplace of neo-​liberal conviviality in the 1990s. Parv Bancil’s play Made In England, produced at the Watermans in 1998, directly addresses Blair’s convivial ‘Asian Kool’, as Dominic Hingorani suggests: Made in England was a direct engagement by Parv Bancil with what ‘cool Britannia’ meant for British Asians […]. Bancil took a critical look at the cultural zeitgeist and its hunger for all things Asian, from balti to Bollywood and took a sceptical position on the appropriation of Asian culture by the mainstream. (Hingorani, 2010: 174) This ‘cultural zeitgeist’ also needs to be seen in context of the transnational flow between Britain and India, with the economic liberalisation of ‘New India’ through the 1990s creating not just more access to all things South Asian, but also the establishment of the ‘Asian Kool’ in India as well, which developed its own brand of remix music, fusing Indian sounds with Western ones, as Amitabh Sharma states in his experience of New Delhi in 1994, showing how young Indians were using their own culture as a resource for new forms of composite music and identification: They come in all sorts of fancy packages, colors and catchy names. Many are imports. They’re not the latest detergents to hit India, but in a way they, too, are products of its liberalized market and changing society. […] All it takes is a recent Western song. The lyrics are erased and replaced with a generous helping of spicy words (often a mix of English and Hindi or Punjabi) and a dash of Indian-​ness. And, voila! there’s an Indian song of the ’90s which, they

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hope, is set to rock the charts. […] ‘It’s cool, man!’ one patron yelled happily as he and the others in denim or mini-​skirts danced into the wee hours to the Asian Kool strains of Hindified rap and disco bhangra. (Sharma, 1994) Back in Britain, the fashion for all things Asian extended to Bollywood films which were seen increasingly in cinemas across the country, leading to a rise in dance classes, with Honey’s Dance Academy opening as the first institution for Bollywood dance in Britain, as discussed in Chapter 1, resulting in staged performances which removed the music and dance from the context of films into live performance and competitions. As well as Bollywood dance, ‘Asian Kool’ led to the commodification of ‘bling’ saris, bindis and mehndi becoming part of everyday wear for non-​Asians. It was in this climate of Asian popular culture as commodification that the film Hum Aapke Hain Koun …! was released in India, shifting the style of Bollywood films, and when shown in Britain, led to Tamasha producing Fourteen Songs.

Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and a Funeral Hum Aapke Hain Koun …! (Who Am I To You), often abbreviated to HAHK, was directed by Sooraj Barjatya, starring the well-​known Bollywood actors Madhuri Dixit and Salman Khan, with music by Raamlaxman and lyrics by Ravinder Rawal and Dev Kohli, with renowned playback singers Lata Mangeshkar and S. P. Balasubrahmanyam performing the songs for the two leading roles. The film was released in India in 1994, in the midst of the economic liberalisation and opening up of ‘New India’, with its focus on the modern and a global capitalist culture celebrating the new elite and consumerism which showed that India was open to the world. However, the potential threat of this to the ‘traditional’ values of the country also resulted in a backlash rise in conservatism, particularly regarding religion, the family and the position of women. Kaur and Hansen suggest that: the aesthetics of ‘newness’ in ‘new’ India are similarly tied to the reformulation of an earlier nationalist project of paternalist inclusion. ‘New’ India is premised on a muscular nationalism espousing a (Hindu) civilisational narrative of the nation and celebrating the achievements and cultural predilections of a largely upper caste Hindu elite and middle class. (Kaur and Hansen, 2016: 267) HAHK embodies this vision of the ‘new’, as it portrays both an elite North Indian family enjoying wealth and leisure, with a ‘modern girl’ as one of the leads, but also is essentially about a return to conservative values of the family, home and filial duty, where the ‘modern girl’ ultimately conforms to traditional values and sacrifices herself for duty to the family. In this way, the film is a somewhat nostalgic look back to earlier traditions and creates an idealistic view of family and home, where religion

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and duty are central. As Gayatri Gopinath explains, regarding the return to ‘family values’ in the film, this is: a phrase which apparently referred to the film’s rejection of the sex and violence formulas of other popular Hindi movies. However, this phrase speaks more to the ways in which the film works within Hindu nationalist discourses of the nation by articulating a desire for a nostalgic ‘return’ to an impossible ideal, that of the supposedly ‘traditional’ Hindu family and kinship arrangements that are staunchly upper middle class and heterosexual. (Gopinath, 2005: 117) HAHK marked a change in focus of Bollywood from the ‘masala’ films about violence and sex, to instead the ‘family film’, essentially a romantic comedy drama based in the domestic sphere. This shift in narrative and setting is also what made it so popular to the global diasporic communities leading to unprecedented box office takings, and the establishment of this new type of film for the NRI as well as Indian markets. The plot of the film demonstrates this shift in focus to the space of the home. Brothers Rajesh and Prem live in upper-​middle-​class comfort, but had lost their mother many years before.Their father decided to make an arranged marriage between Rajesh and Pooja, the daughter of his old college friend. Pooja’s younger sister Nisha and Prem meet, and fall in love with each other. Rajesh and Pooja have a baby, but Pooja soon dies in an accident, having been unable to fulfil her promise to Prem and Nisha of formally approving their marriage. Initially through a misunderstanding, Nisha agrees to marry Rajesh to provide a mother to his child. She decides to give up her own happiness and love of Prem in order to do her duty to her family, however, Rajesh finds out the truth just before they are due to marry, and insists that she marries Prem instead. Thus, the wedding is both a love match and arranged, seeming to overcome the binary of modernity and tradition. This binary is seen in themes in the film. The notion of love is used throughout. Rajesh and Prem’s large upper-​middle-​class house is named ‘Prem Nivas’, meaning ‘House of Love’, and Prem’s name also means ‘Love’. However, this love is not just of that between the young couples, but also of love to the family, and that it is this love that creates the sense of duty: Prem’s jeep has the phrase ‘I love my family’ painted in graffiti on the side. The idealistic portrayal of the two families shows no quarrels or disagreements, but rather both houses are filled with laughter and supportive relatives, as well as displaying the wealth of ‘New India’ in the opulence of home and garden, with a mixture of Indian and imported Western items within the house. The portrayal of the two sisters in particular shows that the modern is tempered through the conservative. Nisha is initially seen as a ‘modern Indian girl’: she wears bright Western clothes; is being educated in computer studies at college; wears roller skates in the first scene; enjoys playing practical jokes; and is portrayed as open and forward in her manner. However, this does not last long, and she soon conforms to more traditional roles of women: cooking food for Prem;

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wearing Indian outfits; undertaking rituals for her sister’s wedding; her education is not mentioned again; and she agrees to sacrifice her love for Prem for her love for her family and duty in marrying Rajesh. Even in the famous scene of the baby shower which includes a queering moment of one of the women dragging-​up to imitate Prem, Nisha plays the heterosexual woman flirting with ‘him’. This scene is discussed by Gopinath (op. cit.: 118), who points out that though there are hints of queering sexuality in the scene, heterosexual order is restored at the end when Prem himself steps in and starts dancing with Nisha. The character of Pooja, in contrast to Nisha, is seen as a ‘traditional’ girl from the beginning, always wearing Indian clothes, and being modest and quiet.When she leaves her parental home she is described as being like the goddess Lakshmi, and had made their ‘home into a heaven’.When she arrives at her husband’s house after the wedding she is presented with a copy of the Ramayana which tells of Sita as the ‘good wife’, and indeed in the next scene she is seen in the kitchen preparing food for the family, acting as the dutiful wife and filling the place of the absent mother.The figure of the Hindu god Krishna is also very present in the film, and it is his intervention through prayer that creates the final happy resolution, and so piety to Hinduism is a key aspect of the representation of the values of the ‘New India’. The film is renowned for having 14 songs, as opposed to the more usual 6 or 7. The music of these songs shows the composite and transnational nature of Bollywood, with a range of styles including pop, Indian semi-​classical, religious music, folk songs, Latin American rhythms and Bhangra. The final wedding scene contains a Bhangra-​influenced song and dance sequence, demonstrating Roy’s ideas discussed in Chapter 1 of the ‘Bollywoodisation’ of Bhangra, where the ‘overwriting of traditional bhangra with a Bollywood semiotics of dress, appearance, gesture, bodily movement, and sound helps to re-​inscribe this culturally coded Panjabi genre into a decontextualized Bollywood ethnic rite’ (Roy, 2014: 158–​159). The use of the sounds of dhols and Bhangra rhythms, as well as some traditional movements from the dance interspersed with the Bollywood moves and aesthetics, adds to the colourful spectacle of the wedding scene in the mixing of Bollywood and Bhangra. The styles of dance in the film similarly reflect the range of music genres, with elements of Bollywood, Bhangra, folk and semi-​classical, as well as Western dance which will be discussed later. The sensibility of nostalgia is also seen in the nostalgic love of older ‘classic’ Bollywood films which are referenced in HAHK. In the scene of the cushion game, family members pay a forfeit if they lose, which includes them re-​enacting scenes or singing songs from classic films such as Mughal-​ E-​Azam and Sholay. This reinforces the representation that the ‘modern’ actually harks back to a nostalgic and idealised view of the ‘traditional’, and that young people can be part of the ‘New India’ and yet also conform to the ‘old’ version of religious piety and family duty. It is therefore interesting that Kristine Landon-​Smith and Sudha Bhuchar, directors of Tamasha Theatre Company, chose this film to make into a transadaptation on stage as a piece of musical theatre in Britain. Certainly, the main focus on the interior of the two houses and the characters of the families in the film has

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a strong sense of theatricality, and so may appear to lend itself to a stage version. However, Landon-​Smith took this a step further and initially created a radio play based on the film, with the original soundtrack having simultaneous translations into English by the actors. While it may appear that losing the visual aspect that is such a strong feature of Bollywood films might be a disadvantage, Landon-​Smith instead feels that: [f]‌ilm is probably closest to radio of any of the mediums, partly because of the facility of being able to move from one location to another in no time at all. We don’t have that luxury in the theatre, so to bring Hum Aapke Hain Koun to stage presents very different challenges. (Landon-​Smith, 1998) She points out that the film itself is an adaptation of a novel, and that the original ending that involved Rajesh also dying was changed in the film to produce a happier outcome. Another reason for creating a stage version is that the film had also become very popular with Asian and other audiences in Britain. It is interesting to note that it was released in India in the same year that the film Four Weddings and a Funeral, directed by Mike Newell, was released in the UK. Similar to what HAHK did for the Indian film industry, Four Weddings also led to a revival in the British film industry, with a film based in a nostalgic view of Britain, one that is very white and upper middle class, with a focus on the family and social situations through the safe and conservative lens of romantic comedy, and the use of the rituals of weddings and a funeral to give spectacle to the film. It is unsurprising then, that Landon-​ Smith made this connection and gave a tongue-​in-​cheek reference to it by titling the stage musical Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and a Funeral as a culturally relativist acknowledgement of the similarities, as well as indicating that this is a transadaptation from India into a British Asian perspective. Fourteen Songs was originally co-​produced with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and premiered at the Lyric Hammersmith in November 1998, then toured to the studios at the Bristol Old Vic and Birmingham Rep. It was restaged in 2001, and toured to eight theatres around England. This discussion of the play will focus on the 1998 production. It was directed by Landon-​Smith, also credited as the choreographer, with Sue Mayes as designer and Paul Taylor as lighting designer. The cast included Pravesh Kumar, who would later found Rifco Arts, as discussed in Chapter 5, playing Prem; Parminder Nagra as Nisha, who would subsequently star in the film of Bend It Like Beckham and mainstream television series in the UK and US; and Rajesh was played by Raza Jaffrey, who then starred in Bombay Dreams, and has also been in mainstream television and film productions (see Figure 3.1). The process of transferring the film to a stage production required some substantial reworking. The film is three and a half hours long, with large lavish sets and a big cast. This was cut down to a two-​hour stage version, with a relatively small set and playing area, and a cast of ten actors. As a transadaptation, the script, which

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of the families from Fourteen Songs, with Raza Jaffrey (front left), Parminder Nagra (back left) and Pravesh Kumar (back right). Source: courtesy of Tamasha Theatre Company. FIGURE  3.1  Scene

was written by Sudha Bhuchar and Landon-​Smith, is mainly in English, with some words and phrases of Hindi incorporated. One key decision they made was to keep the convention from Bollywood films of having the actors mime the songs to a previously recorded track. However, they felt that the lyrics needed to be in English, and since direct translation from Hindi neither scanned well nor used culturally familiar references and metaphors, they commissioned new lyrics for the songs from Shaun McCarthy. The main change from the Bollywood convention was that the actors themselves sang and recorded the songs to which they subsequently mimed, rather than having a playback singer performing them. This leads to an interesting disjuncture for the audience who are familiar with the films. It is an accepted convention for the sound of the singing voice to be different –​often very different –​to that of the speaking voice of the actor, however, this does not cause a disruption to the viewing of the film when the actor mimes in a different voice due to the knowledge of the convention. This is in contrast to the actors in the stage version who mime to their own voices which breaks this convention and may have been confusing for audiences who were used to the films. However, this fits in more with the Western musical theatre tradition of the actor singing the songs themselves, though also breaking the norms of stage musicals by having them miming to a pre-​recorded track rather than singing live. The choice of staging the songs in this way therefore created multivalent readings and meanings for the audience, and an unusual mixing of conventions from India and the UK that created a very specific aesthetic in the performance.

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A main difference between the film and stage version is that of scale. As noted above, the stage musical is considerably shorter than the film, and scenes are often substantially edited down or cut from the original. Not all the songs are performed, and instead strains of music from some songs are used during scene changes or as incidental music. This offers the familiarity of recognition of the melody of the songs, even if they are not performed in full. There is a considerable reduction in the scale of the spectacle from the large film sets to the small theatre set.This results in a reduced ability to perform the dance numbers as they were in the film. Instead, the dances are performed by fewer actors, and often the sequences are just suggested by movements of the hips and pelvis (the ‘jhatkas and matkas’ discussed in Chapter 1), arms and hands, with little travel around the stage. In the performance of the song ‘Samdhi Samdhan’ at the engagement ceremony, there is plenty of dance movement and cutting between characters in the film. In the stage version of this scene, the actors instead sit very still when one of the characters is singing so as not to distract from the focus in a much smaller space. While this does restrict the ability to show the full dance sequences and offer the same level of visual spectacle as the film, it suits the size and scale of the stage production, and the movements give enough recognition to suggest the fuller version to the re-​memory of those who know the film. The smaller scale and the ‘liveness’ of the theatre version also allows for a greater level of intimacy and immediacy in some of the scenes. The moment when Nisha gives Prem a brooch and he asks her to pin it on for him, is undertaken quite playfully in the film. However, with just the two actors at the front of the stage in Tamasha’s version, this moment became very intense in the embodiment of the connection between them, evoking a gasp from the audience in seeing the sensuality of the exchange so close to them.The power of live theatre creates a very different type of engagement with the audience to that of a film, thereby adapting the experiencing of watching for the diasporic spectator more used to a mediated rather than live performance. This reduction in scale was also applied to the style of acting which, rather than the exaggerated and melodramatic style in the film, instead became much more naturalistic in the stage production. Landon-​Smith explains: What I call ‘the playing’ style is crucial in making the genre of Bollywood films live on stage. This is a very moving story which the audience must believe. It also has moments of melodrama and stock characters that could appear to be two dimensional. The trick, I think, is in getting the balance right –​so you can never lose the fun to be had from the stock characters but you don’t push them too far so as not to believe or empathise with them. Likewise with the melodrama –​those heightened moments must be given focus but must not be overplayed. […] For the actors, it is important for them to understand the characteristics of a Bollywood film and play those characteristics with a warm affection –​they mustn’t laugh at the genre as this would then lean towards ‘send up’. (Landon-​Smith, 1998)

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In this way, the transadaptation leads to a change in acting style and aesthetics, where a more naturalistic approach to performing the characters means at times the stage musical seems like it could be set amongst Asian families in contemporary Britain. However, this naturalistic approach is then interspersed with the Bollywood music and song, which brings the re-​memory of the film to mind, moving the action back to India and the realm of Bollywood again. The characters are certainly ‘toned down’ from the original. Parminder Nagra in particular plays Nisha as a far quieter character, whose first entrance is still on roller skates, but wearing much less colourful clothes and without the 1980s-​style large hair. The only character still seen as being as exaggerated as in the original is that of Bhagwanti, who is the stock character of the loud, interfering Aunty, played by Shobu Kapoor (see Figure 3.2). This character on stage is the one most aligned with their portrayal in the film, reinforcing the stereotype of the older woman who is both annoying and a source of laughter.There is a shocking moment in the film when her husband hits her loudly (due to a synced sound effect) across the face, and speaks very harshly to her about her behaviour. Landon-​Smith made the decision to keep this moment in the stage version, which leads to a visible punishing of the character in a way that appears justified to the other characters who do not protest. This figure of the Aunty reappears in various productions discussed in the book, as mentioned in Chapter 1, and is a particularly multivalent figure within the community where she is often perceived as a problematic woman who interferes with the other characters. Suman Bhuchar describes the Aunty as being ‘a pervasive figure in the real world of Asians’ who becomes the ‘repository for all things good and bad’ (Bhuchar, 2017). Seeing a woman slapped on stage without her husband being rebuked by the other characters is a moment of disjuncture for the theatre audience, where violence and cruelty to a woman is interjected into the otherwise light and convivial atmosphere without comment. While generally the re-​ enactment of the song sequences is substantially adapted and cut down to suit the size of the stage, there is one song where there is a deliberate attempt to mimic the original staging in the film. The song ‘Pehla Pehla Pyar’ is performed by Nisha and Prem as they declare their love for each other. The song has a strong bossa nova beat, and is nostalgically reminiscent of Hollywood musicals from the 1950s in its style, as well as the use of Latin American music in classic Bollywood films of the 1950s and 1960s. This is emphasised by the style of dancing, which incorporates Western forms such as jazz, contemporary and ballet, as well as elements of Bollywood styles. In the film, the song begins in the house, but soon moves out into the garden in front of the pool, where the choreography resembles that of former Hollywood stars such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing together, with jazz, ballet and ballroom moves including jetés, lifts and pirouettes, as well as Bollywood movements of the body, arms and hands. At one point, Prem even circles around a lamp post in the pool, evoking a re-​memory of a similar move by Gene Kelly in Singin’ In The Rain (1952). In the stage production, when the song starts, Prem and Nisha are similarly in the house. They then run backstage, and with a lighting change to

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Kapoor as Bhagwanti in Fourteen Songs. Source: courtesy of Tamasha Theatre Company. FIGURE 3.2  Shobu

suggest a darkened outdoors, emerge to perform the rest of the sequence. They are also now dressed in the same iconic way as the two actors in the film: Nisha is wearing a full-​skirted pink dress, and Prem has removed his shirt and is wearing only a vest. The audience reacted with pleasure at the moment of seeing them dressed in this way as it evoked a direct re-​memory of the film, and also laughter as Salman Khan was renowned for being proud of his physique and removing his shirt in films, so for Pravesh Kumar to repeat this was an ‘in-​joke’ creating pleasure for audiences familiar with this. It is interesting to note which scenes were omitted from the stage version. One very iconic scene that was left out was that of the baby shower mentioned earlier. The song in the scene, ‘Didi Tera Devar Deewana’, is one of the most popular from the film, as is the scene as a whole, so audiences may well have been expecting to see this in the stage musical. The decision to cut the scene may have been due to logistics of space and actors, however, it also removed the only moment of queerness and questioning of sexuality in the film. The convention of a woman dressing as a man in all-​female ritual ceremonies such as the sangeet to both poke fun at men, and to ‘educate’ the bride, is one that would likely be known to some Indian audiences, and it might be that other audiences unfamiliar with this convention may have misunderstood the meaning. However, the removal of the queering in the scene also removes the only moment of subverting the dominant conservative heterosexual focus of the production. As Gopinath points out, the scene in the film ‘constitutes a moment of rupture and queer incursion into the film’s dominant Hindu nationalist, patriarchal ideology’ (Gopinath, 2005: 118), so to lose this in the stage musical only underlines these dominant ideologies.

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In the height of the cultural appropriation and commodification of ‘Asian Kool’, Fourteen Songs offers a safe and conservative representation of South Asians to the diasporic communities and other audiences. The tension between modernity and tradition is resolved through the ‘arranged love marriage’, but it is still seen in the context of the discourse of the importance of family and duty. No one in the film or stage musical steps out of line, or disagrees with their parents. As inter-​ generational conflict is a marker of identity of British South Asians, this lack of conflict may appear contradictory. However, the transnational migration of the ideas from ‘New India’ present in the film –​that a young person can be ‘modern’ as long as they also conform to traditionalist notions of how to behave –​may also strike a chord with some South Asian families in Britain who are negotiating such issues in their lives. As stated in Chapter  2, the second generation can also sometimes revert to a greater conservatism than their parents, particularly with respect to their children, and Fourteen Songs offers an idealised and safe vision of family life which might seem very attractive in the UK, even if not necessarily reflecting the reality of experience. The aspect of nostalgia is also present, with both the re-​memory of the film from India, and the nostalgia present within the film itself of a ‘utopian’ past made present through the economic liberalisation of ‘New India’, though with none of the problems of culture clash associated with it. The pleasure of watching the film re-​enacted on stage, even on a much smaller scale, evokes the enjoyment of seeing something familiar in a new way, as well as recognition of language and culture. It is a piece of popular entertainment that aims to bring in audiences that would not normally go to the theatre. Suman Bhuchar, who created innovative marketing strategies for Tamasha’s productions to attract Asian audiences, explains about the popular aspect of the musical: Populism means that you can wrap something in an entertaining way so that audiences can have a bit of a laugh, a bit of a cry, and they’ll go away feeling warm inside. [Tamasha] consciously looked at the genre of Bollywood to see what it could offer along with the western musical. And a challenge –​we’re not imitating a form, because the whole idea was to take a Bollywood Hindi film, keep the high melodrama, the cheesy moments of it, look at its values, and challenge yourself to make your actors use the playback singing but translate that into English, to redo the music, keep the music structure and style but redo the poems. (Bhuchar, 2017) Therefore, the element of the popular is important for Tamasha, as ‘doing popular work was part of the core of the company’s desire as a way of communicating to their South Asian audiences, and to get them into the theatre’ (ibid.).This reinforces a key aspect of Tamasha’s work and foundation for their funding, which was the development of ‘new audiences’. Up to this point, they had fulfilled this brief by creating joint productions with established theatres such as the Birmingham Rep that had been seeking such ‘new audiences’, but Fourteen Songs saw them addressing

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this need in a different way, and one that could perhaps be considered as a more ‘independent’ approach by the company, rather than working in association with a theatre, and the production was very successful in this respect. However, while the production being seen on a mainstream stage in Britain offers an intervention into the dominant whiteness of such spaces, and gave opportunities to the company and actors to expand their careers as well as develop new audiences, the multivalence of readings in the production also raises the question as to whether the use of Bollywood in this way is actually reinforcing dominant ideologies and stereotypes in both India and the UK. Two members of the audience for the 2001 production of Fourteen Songs were Andrew Lloyd Webber and A. R. Rahman, who were themselves in the process of developing a Bollywood stage musical, but on a very different scale to the Asian-​led production of Fourteen Songs by Tamasha. Their placing of Bollywood on the West End stage in Bombay Dreams is discussed in the next section.

Bombay Dreams The promotion and commodification of Asian Kool continued through the end of the 1990s and into the early 2000s. This was accompanied by a growth of representations of both British Asian culture and Bollywood from India in mainstream media in Britain. Goodness Gracious Me, discussed in the previous chapter, gained a large, mainly white audience through to the end of its run in 2001. Along with the success of HAHK in the NRI markets, other films from India became popular in mainstream British cinemas, including Dil Se (1998) and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), as well as the re-​make of Devdas (2002) which is an opulent historical epic with two globally known stars, Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai. In 2001 the film Lagaan, made consciously for global as well as Indian audiences, was nominated for an Academy Award. As well as films from India, there was an increase in visibility of films made by diasporic Asians. In particular, Monsoon Wedding (2001), directed by Mira Nair, became a huge hit worldwide. Though set in India, its global appeal was through Nair depicting themes of culture clash and inter-​generational conflict that resonated in the diasporic communities, along with the spectacle of the wedding and pre-​ wedding ceremonies. It was predominately in English, and included actors who were known internationally such as Roshan Seth and Lillete Dubey, and incorporated a storyline of an arranged marriage with an NRI from the US coming to India to be married. The soundtrack included songs by well-​known singers including Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Sukhwinder Singh, which again appealed to Asian communities around the world. There was an influence of Bollywood on non-​Indian film-​makers, seen in Baz Luhrmann’s film Moulin Rouge! (2001), which is an homage to Bollywood, drawing on its conventions and aesthetics in a mainstream Western film production. In 2002, a very British Asian film was released: Gurinder Chadha’s Bend It Like Beckham, which will be discussed further in Chapter 5.

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2002 was also the year of the ‘Indian Summer’, which took the festishisation, commodification and multicultural capitalism of all things Indian to a new level. Selfridges in London held ‘23 and a Half Days of Bollywood’, with clothes, furnishings and food from the subcontinent; the V&A Museum ran an exhibition of Indian film posters; the British Film Institute had a season of Bollywood films, as did Channel 4; and India came to play England at cricket, contributing to the focus on all things Indian –​even Cherie Blair was wearing designer versions of Indian outfits to support her husband’s vision of the convivial multicultural ‘Cool Britannia’. It was in the midst of this Indian Summer on 19 June that Bombay Dreams premiered at the Victoria Apollo theatre in London. Conceived and produced by the doyen of the British megamusical world, Andrew Lloyd Webber, the show consisted of a creative team drawn from both the UK and India to offer a transnational appeal. The book was written by Meera Syal, known to audiences through Goodness Gracious Me; the show was directed by renowned British theatre director Steven Pimlott; the English lyrics for the songs were written by Don Black, who was known for the lyrics to Sunset Boulevard (another Lloyd Webber creation) and the hit title song from the film Born Free; and choreographer Anthony Van Laast, who had also previously worked on other Lloyd Webber productions. The Indian contribution to the creative team came from producer Shekhar Kapur, also known to British audiences through directing the film Elizabeth; leading Bollywood choreographer Farah Khan; and significantly, the globally renowned composer A. R. Rahman, whose compositions for Indian films made him one of the highest-​profile figures from India, and a key name in the making and marketing of the show. Many of the actors were British Asian performers, and actors such as Raza Jaffrey, Preeya Kalidas, Ayesha Dharker and Ramon Tikaram have subsequently been seen in mainstream theatre, television and film productions. There are multivalent readings of Bombay Dreams, from offering an intervention into the dominant whiteness of the West End theatre world and promotion of Asian culture and actors, to creating a commodified, appropriated and filtered view of Asian culture through a British megamusical lens that waters down and uses Bollywood as a globalised capitalist product to sell tickets. Indeed, the story in the show of Akaash, a poor boy from the slums in Bombay who dreams of and eventually attains fame and fortune as a Bollywood film star, can be seen as presenting a narrative of the positive effects of globalisation, as well as of migration, where the migrant dream of leaving the ‘old’ world behind to attain the economic success of the ‘modern’ world is achieved. The tension between modernity and tradition in both ‘New India’ and the British Asian diasporas discussed in Fourteen Songs is thus also present in Bombay Dreams, seen in the very title which keeps the older name of Bombay, rather than the new form of Mumbai which has been the official name since 1996. The sensibility of nostalgia is also very present in the show, with Akaash looking nostalgically back to the old ‘homeland’ of the slum which he is eventually able to ‘save’ through his new-​found riches. This saving is also one of preservation, which enables him to return and visit the ‘homeland’ to remember where he came from. Lloyd Webber himself also incorporates this

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element of romantic nostalgia in many of his shows, such as Cats and Phantom of the Opera. However, in Bombay Dreams, he wants to explore and exploit the world of Bollywood to create not just a new show, but also a new audience, being aware of the value of the ‘Brown pound’. While Fourteen Songs may have tried to find a style of playing that would be more suitable for a British audience, the acting style and design of Bombay Dreams reinforces the exaggeration and melodrama of Bollywood films. I have written more extensively about the production elsewhere (Daboo, 2005), and so for this section will focus on the music and transadaptation of A. R. Rahman’s songs, as well as the process of marketing and promoting the production to Asian audiences. Lloyd Webber’s decision to collaborate with Rahman, so well known to many British Asians, certainly offered the opportunity to draw in audiences from those communities. Rahman followed a convention of Bollywood films in recycling some of his songs from films into the show in different forms. It is likely that many of the non-​Asian audiences did not know that rather than listening to songs that were newly composed for the production, as is the usual convention, there were instead existing songs in a new context.The performance of these songs evoked the pleasure of re-​memory for South Asian audiences who were familiar with them, and this also led to a form of ownership over not just the show, but the theatre space itself, as will be discussed later. Rahman himself is originally from South India, being born in Chennai in Tamil Nadu, and his music displays a composite and transnational nature with a large range of styles of both Indian and Western forms of music, and it is partly this that gives his music such an appeal to both Indian and international audiences: Like music directors before him, Rahman’s music is cosmopolitan in the broadest sense. It draws from a wide variety of international music styles, making his music palatable to fans of world music in ways that are distinct from other music directors. Most important, however, he utilizes diverse regional Indian folk instruments and performance practices in his compositions, drawing in particular from Tamil, Gujarati, and Punjabi traditions. Thus, even as his music reflects an awareness of international styles, Rahman has created a new parity between Indian and international musical instruments and traditions. His compositions feature small ensembles with solo instruments that weave in and out of the accompaniment. Yet, unlike most other music directors, his knowledge of Western functional harmony is apparent in his compositions, and harmonic progressions are foregrounded in the sound mix in ways that are distinct from his predecessors. (Beaster-​Jones, 2014: 139) In this way, Rahman creates a composite of Indian and Western styles, as well as drawing together contemporary and traditional music forms into a new aesthetic. The song ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’ from the film Dil Se became one of the most famous

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song and dance sequences around the globe, shot on a moving train through the Indian countryside. This song was also used in Bombay Dreams, though with the pretence that it was from a different film made by one of the characters in the show. However, it was performed in such a way as to produce a re-​memory of the original through the actors dancing on top of a moving platform, suggesting the train, and with some similar dance movements and items of costume that were copied from the film, as seen in Figure 3.3. The removal of the song from the original context and reproduced in a new form did not destroy the enjoyment of familiarity for the Asian audiences, particularly as the song was performed in the original Hindi, and was lip-​synced by the actors to reinforce the Bollywood convention, though most of the other songs were sung live in keeping with Western musical theatre tradition. Although this song is so well known in Hindi, it is interesting to note that it is itself a transadaptation, and originates in a very different form to that of glitzy Bollywood: The lyrics of ‘Chal chaiyya chaiyya’ are based on the Punjabi folk song ‘Thaiyya Thaiyya’ by the Sufi saint Bulleh Shah, which Dil Se’s lyricist Gulzar changed to ‘chaiyya chaiyya.’ The song form of ‘Chal chaiyya chaiyya’ is a variation of the mukhṛā-​antarā form, with an interesting melodic and lyrical digression in the first antarā that, along with the repetition of ‘chaiyya chaiyya,’ directly and indirectly references Sufi mysticism. […] This Sufi influence is prevalent throughout Rahman’s musical repertoire and is one element that consistently distinguishes his music from that of newer music directors. (op. cit.: 141, 140) This element of Punjabi Sufi music coming from a mystical tradition and mixed with the contemporary sounds and instrumentation creates a distinctive compositional style for Rahman which may be unknown to the fans of his music and the films. However, this does place ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’ in the interesting position of being an adaptation of an adaptation of an adaptation within the musical, demonstrating the complex layers of mixing of forms that are homogenised under the label of ‘Bollywood’. Another key scene in the film that uses the recycling and transadaptation of an A. R. Rahman song that is also performed as if it were in a film is ‘Shakalaka Baby’, which is originally from the film Mudhalvan (1999). This film was released in Tamil and Telegu, and later remade in Hindi as Nayak:  The Real Hero (2001) (Getter, 2014: 68). In the film, it is an ‘item number’ and shot like a music video, with the singers wearing contemporary Western outfits. The lyrics ‘reference the desires of the younger generation to succeed in the modern, competitive world’ (ibid.), and so it is not surprising that this song was deemed suitable for inclusion in Bombay Dreams to fit in with the themes of the show. It is performed on stage in the musical as a spectacular item number, with the character Rani and backing dancers dressed in ‘bling’ Bollywood outfits and headdress, as opposed to the contemporary outfits in the film. The film also includes contemporary dance moves including disco and hip hop, whereas the stage version uses more ‘traditional’ Bollywood costume and

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FIGURE 3.3  Sophiya Haque as Rani and Stephen Rahman-​Hughes as Akaash performing

‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’ in Bombay Dreams. Source: James Bareham, courtesy of the Really Useful Group.

choreography with the ‘jhatkas and matkas’, as well as arm and hand movements, and facial expressions. There is even a ‘wet sari’ moment on stage with the addition of a fountain, seen in Figure 3.4. Due to the impressive spectacle of the song and dance, ‘Shakalaka Baby’ was used as the main promotional vehicle for the show in mainstream media. This also led to its shift onto social media through sites such as YouTube which moved it from the local platform of the Victoria Apollo to the global one of the Internet, and the song and choreography soon grew in popularity around the world, re-​performed by dance groups and schools in the United States, Europe and Southeast Asia. As Beaster-​Jones points out, the song: did not achieve this global attention solely on the basis of its inclusion in the Tamil film of 1999. Rather, by shifting from the Indian cinema to the Western musical theatre […] Rahman’s music was exposed to an audience

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Haque as Rani performing ‘Shakalaka Baby’ in Bombay Dreams. Source: James Bareham, courtesy of the Really Useful Group. FIGURE 3.4  Sophiya

that was both culturally and socio-​economically distinct from the Indian film audience. […] This shift moved Rahman into a broader international spotlight, in part due to the musical’s massive promotional campaign. (Beaster-​Jones, 2014: 69) The resulting transnational flow of the song and dance around the world was thus due to its performance in the theatre in Britain, having originated in film in India. This removal of a song and dance number from a film or show and becoming popular in its own right due to a media campaign and social media sharing was later also seen with the song ‘Jai Ho’, again composed by Rahman, from the film Slumdog Millionaire (2008), directed by Danny Boyle. This popular British film was set in India, and won an Academy Award, also leading to an increase of exposure to Bollywood around the world.The song and dance sequence of ‘Jai Ho’ has similarly been re-​performed in many different contexts globally, and come to be a representation of Bollywood, and indeed Indian culture due to the mainstream popularity.

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The point about the large-​scale publicity and marketing for Bombay Dreams is significant. This was achievable due to the size of the budget, which was also reflected in the high production costs and values, as well as the large set and cast that was possible due to Lloyd Webber’s backing. This was in contrast to Fourteen Songs which had a tiny budget in comparison, mirrored in the lower production values and scale. Lloyd Webber wanted to bring Asian audiences into the West End, and so employed two marketing experts with experience in British South Asian theatre, Suman Bhuchar and Hardish Virk, to develop strategies to engage these communities who might otherwise not feel drawn to a musical in the West End. Bhuchar had worked on the promotion of Tamasha’s shows, including Fourteen Songs, and Virk had worked on a number of Asian-​led or -themed performances in mainstream theatre spaces. The success of Fourteen Songs was a ‘test drive’ for Bhuchar in the marketing strategies she developed further for Bombay Dreams. She played on the popular appeal of the subject matter, in addition to familiarity with some of the people involved such as Meera Syal and Andrew Lloyd Webber, as well as Rahman. She identifies four key components of marketing shows to British Asian audiences: ownership, Bollywood, access and education (Bhuchar, 2012: 147). This means that audiences need to feel the show is relevant to them and they would enjoy it; that it needs to be ‘authentically’ Bollywood; the theatre needs to be welcoming and group ticket prices are important; and the audiences and theatre staff need to undertake training in engaging with new audiences and processes of booking.Virk uses similar strategies, and had previously worked with the Birmingham Rep on their production of the Ramayana to change the theatre space itself to make it more welcoming for Asian audiences (Daboo, 2012: 157–​ 158). They produced flyers and postcards about Bombay Dreams that highlighted the Bollywood element, and these were placed in a range of outlets in relevant community spaces, and Virk did direct engagement work with community members to talk about the show in order to encourage them to travel to London to see it. The range of work Bhuchar and Virk undertook proved to be successful, and Asian audiences came to see the show, creating an intervention into the dominant whiteness usually seen in such mainstream theatre spaces. Some community members came to see it many times due to the enjoyment of familiarity of the songs. This led to a specific moment of ownership of both the show and the theatre space that resulted in a disruption to the usual behaviour in theatres. Musician Kuljit Bhamra was one of the two percussionists playing drums and seen on stage, unlike the rest of the orchestra that was hidden in the pit. He states that this had been part of the design from the beginning, perhaps in part to create a visibility of the Indian instruments and musicians as opposed to the Western ones who remained out of sight. At that time, there was no notation system for the tabla drums that he played. Instead, he was given a recording that Rahman had made of the music, and asked to play something that would fit with this. However, he required a deputy to be engaged in case he was ill, and this meant that he needed to be able to notate what he played in some form. It was this need that resulted in Bhamra creating a

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unique notation system for the tabla and other Indian instruments that has allowed them to be composed for and played with musical ensembles in a way not possible before. Bhamra repeated this process in Bend It Like Beckham: the musical, discussed in Chapter 5, where composer Howard Goodall used the notation system for the first time in writing a musical theatre score. In Bombay Dreams, Bhamra explains that he and percussionist Shan Chana played an ‘outro’ on drums at the end of the show.The Asian audiences loved this so much, they began dancing in the aisles and in front of the stage. This initially made the ushers very nervous about health and safety issues, as this was unfamiliar to them as audience behaviour in the theatre. However, the Asian audiences continued to do this and it became established as a ritual of the production. Bhamra states that some audience members asked for a CD of him and Shan playing, rather than that of the actual show songs (Bhamra, 2016). This moment of ownership and disruption of the usual practices and dominant whiteness of a mainstream theatre space is a significant intervention of British South Asians into the cultural landscape. However, as with Fourteen Songs, there is a question of the form of this representation of Asian-​ness that is offered through the use of Bollywood aesthetics, forms and conventions in both the musicals, and whether this is ultimately conforming to racialised stereotypes rather than subverting them, as questioned in Chapter 2 in relation to comedy. The commodification of Asian culture and valorising of Bollywood in the Asian Kool can also place Bombay Dreams within the appropriation of multicultural global capitalism, which is the aspiration of the narrative of the show itself. The use of the popular brings in the Asian audiences, but also offers a very particular view of the communities to themselves and non-​Asians that can be placed in the realm of multicultural conviviality. This can create a representation that denies the complexities of identities and issues for the communities, giving them one voice only –​that of Bollywood. And yet it is also the popular appeal of Bollywood that is giving the voice and visibility that might otherwise not be heard and seen. These multivalent issues are further compounded through the form of musical theatre, which itself has often been derided as ‘populist’ and purely for entertainment, rather than offering a more serious intervention and exploration through the medium of theatre. The next chapter explores plays that incorporate elements of Bollywood, or the ‘Bollywoodisation’ of plays. However, it is possible to ask, at what point is a production a musical, or a play with music, song and dance in it? This harks back to Naidu’s term ‘Neti-​neti’ at the beginning of this chapter, in that the use of Bollywood makes it difficult to categorise a particular form, as much as Bollywood itself is difficult to categorise due to the multiplicity of its compositional forms. The plays discussed in the next chapter were all produced in the new millennium after Bombay Dreams. The changes to the social and cultural life of Britain after the ‘Indian Summer’ of 2002 had major consequences for the identity of ‘British-​ness’ for the Asian communities. However, even though the heat of the ‘Indian Summer’ died down, and Asian Kool gave way to the next fashion in cool, Bollywood in Britain was here to stay.

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Notes 1 Indian writer Shobhaa De uses the term ‘Hinglish’ to describe her use of a blend of Hindi and English in her work, though this is based in a composite of language rather than aesthetics. 2 The use of the word ‘conservative’ with a small ‘c’ is used throughout the book to indicate a social conservatism, particularly regarding traditional values associated with the family and religion. ‘Conservative’ is used with a capital ‘C’ to indicate the political party and associated politics in the UK, in order to differentiate the two.

4 BOLLYWOOD ON STAGE Transadaptation and ‘Bollywoodisation’

The productions discussed in this chapter were made between 2007 and 2016, and have incorporated elements of Bollywood in different ways. Following on from the Asian Kool and ‘Indian Summer’ of 2002, as well as the global success of films such as Slumdog Millionaire, Bollywood became increasingly popular in British society with a growth in dance classes for both fitness and fun, as well as the forming of Bollywood dance companies that performed in community events and festivals such as the melas, and took part in national Bollywood dance competitions. The younger generation of Asians in the new millennium also generally had a different relationship to the films and music from India than the first and second generations. For them, Britain is ‘home’, but they are also able to draw on the culture from India as part of their identity without feeling that this is an identity ‘crisis’, but rather an aspect of the global flow of culture. Jatinder Verma, speaking of younger British Asian actors, states that: I’m experiencing a whole range of third-​or fourth-​generation actors who have none of the hang-​ups of the first or second generation in terms of India and Bollywood. Absolutely none. They are equally at home with the Indian and Bollywood as they are with anything western. (Verma, 2017) Part of the increase in the global engagement with Bollywood was due to digital media and the Internet. With films and videos of song and dance sequences now having immediate access around the world through digital television channels and the Internet, and social media enabling exchange and instant sharing of recreated versions of songs and dances, Bollywood is firmly global in different forms of media and cultural expression. This has also created a cultural and social arena for the performance of Bollywood song and dance that is not confined to the space of

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the films, but exists beyond this in live and mediated forms. As well as the third and fourth generations of the Asian migrants who had arrived from the 1950s to 1970s, the millennium also saw an increase in the number of students coming from India to the UK who brought their own versions of music and dance with them, and also a growth in professionals and their families moving from India to the UK for work. This created a different type of audience to that of the ‘British’ South Asian audiences who were used to the histories and forms of culture they had been part of over the previous four decades, and these newer South Asian communities wanted other forms of entertainment, and had a different cultural and aesthetic appreciation and understanding of theatre. The period since 2002 has also been a turbulent one for migrant communities in Britain. Following on from 9/​11 and 7/​7, there has been an increase in racism, particularly focused towards the Muslim communities. This was compounded by the economic crisis, where blame has been placed on migrants being a ‘burden’ on British people, and draining resources. The rise of far-​right nationalism across Europe, and the revolt against globalisation which has not benefited many groups across the continent, have resulted in an atmosphere that may be anything but ‘convivial’. This rise in racism and racist groups is placed alongside the apparently contradictory practice of the increase of ‘political correctness’ and the fear of being perceived as ‘racist’ and not wanting to offend communities. These multivalent issues have tended to result in mainstream British South Asian theatre productions offering popular entertainment that is seen as ‘safe’ to communities and audiences, particularly since the controversy surrounding Birmingham Rep’s production of Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s play Bhezti in 2004, discussed later in the chapter. The ‘Bollywoodisation’ of theatre is in contrast to the more political and radical work that was being produced in the 1980s and early 1990s, and the HAC collective saw this trend beginning as early as 1986: ‘Asian theatre in Britain has taken a turn for the worst [d]‌ue to pressure from funding bodies and the current climate of political compromise, eg “Will this be popular?” ’ (HAC, 1986). This need to be ‘popular’ began to dominate productions and the work of companies due to having to fill theatres and provide entertainment that would not offend. The representations of South Asians seen in mainstream venues which are discussed in this chapter demonstrate these contradictions through the different strategies used to incorporate Bollywood on the British stage.

Transadaptation, and the ‘Bollywoodisation’ of European classics The importance of the idea of adaptation for diasporic communities was discussed in Chapter 2. The first migrant generation had to adapt substantially to their new ‘home’, often with a nostalgic looking back to the ‘homeland’ left behind, and trying to forge a new life in Britain while retaining aspects of the culture and values of the ‘homeland’. The second generation also needed to adapt to the process of integration and finding what being British means where they may still

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feel themselves to be ‘other’ in the convivial multicultural country propounded by neo-​liberalism. Theatre companies such as Tara, Tamasha and Rifco were created by second-​generation artists who were dealing with the ‘culture clash’ and ‘inter-​generational conflict’ of negotiating between being brought up in Britain, with their family originating from another country. Practitioners such as Jatinder Verma also grew up in a time of racism and hostility, and began making theatre in response to this. It is therefore unsurprising that the markers of identity of culture clash and inter-​generational conflict are seen in their theatre productions. However, with the changes to the experience of British Asians during the last decade of the twentieth century and the first of the new millennium, the work made by these companies also adapted to encompass the ‘popular’ in order to attract audiences to address issues relevant to their lives. Bollywood remained a way to both make work that would appeal to those audiences and satisfy funders that a company would be ‘profitable’, and also to use the forms and aesthetics from Bollywood in a process of adaptation and composition with Western forms of theatre to produce work that could be seen as ‘British Asian’, existing in the transnational space of the diaspora. This use of Bollywood as a marker of identity for Asians in Britain has also been derided by some Asian theatre practitioners as a reductive way to represent and explore the complex issues affecting communities and individuals, as was discussed in the previous chapter. The ‘Bollywoodisation’ of European texts rather than producing new writing has also been a contentious issue, and this section will examine this approach to work made by Asian-​led companies. Linda Hutcheon’s seminal book acknowledges that adaptation is both a product and a process, where the process ‘always involves both (re)interpretation and then (re-​)creation’ (Hutcheon, 2012: 8). Recent studies have attempted to offer a more complex discussion of approaches to adaptation that take into account intermediality and intertextuality as well as transcultural strategies, as I discussed previously in relation to Ley’s notion of cultural adaptation. This has also been articulated in the field of British South Asian theatre, where in ‘the search for a diasporic theatre aesthetics, the practice of adaptation has emerged as a recurring feature’ (Buonanno et al., 2011: 1). It is through this process, they state, that practitioners have ‘sought to create a language of the theatre that can reflect the cultural heritage of Asians in Britain, while also responding to the need to challenge the conceptual binary of British and Asian’ (ibid.) by being in the ‘third space’ which is ‘Neti-​neti’ –​neither one nor the other. Adaptation in this form often involves some level of translation, whether of language, culture or media. The term ‘transadaptation’ has been used in translation studies to describe the process of translating texts that does not focus just on language, but also on translating cultural references to make the work more accessible for the target audience (Gambier, 2003: 178). The term has also been used in film and media studies in particular to think about translation beyond language and into the realm of the visual as well, where semiotics plays an important part. This is also significant in considering theatre productions which draw on material from different cultural sources, often involving translation of language, cultural references

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and different media, whether from text to stage, or film to theatre, or theatre which incorporates multimedia elements, as well as song and dance. Buonanno et al. use the term ‘tradaptation’ which Verma utilised to describe the process of translation and adaptation in Tara Arts’s version of Molière’s Tartuffe performed at the National Theatre in 1990. It is set in seventeenth-​century Mughal India; the original French text is translated into English or ‘Binglish’; transposed to a different country; drawing on aesthetics and acting styles from both Indian and British approaches; and performed to audiences in Britain on a mainstream stage. ‘Tradaptation’, according to Derrick Cameron, is a term similar to ‘transadaptation’ in that it is a contraction of ‘translation’ and ‘adaptation’, and was first used by Robert Wilson, and then adopted by Verma, to talk about texts used in new cultural contexts in relation to Tartuffe. In this way, tradaptation is ‘a wholesale reworking and re-​thinking of the original text into a new, non-​European, aesthetic context’ (Cameron, 2014: 17). While both terms have a similar meaning, I have chosen to use the word ‘transadaptation’ in this book as it has the connotation of ‘transnational’ as well as ‘translation’, and also that the adaptations can be across different forms of genre and media as well as culture. The example of Tara’s Tartuffe highlights that adaptation of European classic or canonical texts has been a feature of some of the work seen in British South Asian theatre. This can be placed within a postcolonial strategy where the dominance of these texts through colonial imposition of education and culture in countries such as India, has been approached from a postcolonial lens to offer a new reading and interpretation of the play. This has been a particular strategy of Verma’s, in part due to his desire to find a ‘theatre of migration’, but also to extend his repertoire and as a ‘challenge to Eurocentrism’ (in Buonanno et  al., 2011: 6). However, it is also questionable as to whether the use of European texts to explore a British South Asian sensibility is itself reinforcing a residual colonial discourse on the stage. Parv Bancil criticises Verma’s strategy, as he believes that the emphasis on adaptations can be at the expense of new writing, and speaking of Tamasha’s production of Wuthering Heights discussed below, states that ‘western classics sprinkled with a little bit of garam masala seem to be the only way to get British Asian theatre companies into main-​house theatres’ as well as reinforcing colonial views on women by equating British women in nineteenth-​ century novels and plays with the position of South Asian women (Bancil, 2008a). However, reframing the European texts may offer different readings and meanings from a postcolonial context. This is complicated further in the productions discussed in this book with the ‘Bollywoodisation’ of the texts, through incorporating song and dance, themes and aesthetics from Bollywood films into the adaptations, creating complex mixings of adapted cultural forms, languages and performance styles. The term ‘Bollywoodisation’ was coined by Ashish Rajadhyaksha discussing the economics of the globalisation of the Bollywood film industry around the world, and the movement of Bollywood from cinema into cultural life in other forms, and also forms a marker of identity for the sense of ‘nation’ and national culture:

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the term comes with its own narrative […] and is clearly not restricted any more solely to the cinema but informs a range of products and practices. […] The ‘our culture’ argument, of which Bollywood forms an admittedly prime exemplar, clearly then also informs a range of productions, all combining the insatiable taste for nostalgia with the felt need to keep ‘our (national) culture alive’: from websites to chat shows, from Ismail Merchant and Madhur Jaffrey cookery programmes to advertising, soap operas to music video, niche marketing of various products, satellite channels, journalism, the Indipop ‘remix’ audio cassette and CD industry. (Rajadhyaksha, 2003: 30) As Roy succinctly states, the term ‘Bollywoodisation’ describes ‘a process in which non-​cinematic content is transformed by the adoption of content, address, and style encountered in the Hindi cinema’ (Roy, 2014: 143). This process of ‘Bollywoodisation’, which is also a process of transadaptation, incorporates aspects of the aesthetics and conventions from the films into another cultural form, in this case theatre productions in Britain.The idea that this is part of a ‘national culture’ is also relevant, in that it becomes a marker of identity for being ‘authentically Indian’ in the British context.The two productions to be discussed have combined all these features by adapting a European text through the process of Bollywoodisation and setting it back in the ‘homeland’ of India: Tara’s production of Kanjoos, a transadaptation of Molière’s The Miser in 2013, and Tamasha’s version of Wuthering Heights in 2009. Jatinder Verma had previously adapted a play by Molière, Tartuffe, as mentioned above. In the case of The Miser, the play first underwent a ‘literal’ translation by Patricia Dreyfus, and this new translation was then adapted into the play by Verma and Hardeep Singh Kohli, a well-​known broadcaster and comedian. Verma and Kohli made the decision to transfer the play to modern-​day India. Molière’s play, first performed in 1668, is a satirical comedy using stock characters and physical humour to portray the figure of the miser, Harpagon, who is attempting to force his daughter into an arranged marriage. The themes and style of this play make it clear why Verma and Kohli might want to adapt this to an Indian context, however, Kohli also explains that there is a more contemporary issue behind the choice as well: [The] world spins on an axis of the financial, orbits the chaos of consumerism. […] While the worlds [Molière’s France and contemporary India] may seem very different human nature has changed little. But today’s India … well, its trajectory is inexorably upward. Moliere’s Harpagon becomes Tara Arts’ Harjinder, and while the names change, the accents and a few references it is astonishing how crackling, how coruscatingly contemporary the narrative is, particularly given the morales of modern, ebullient India. (in Tara Arts, Kanjoos programme, 2012)

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In this way, the play is making a comment on contemporary issues of the focus on economic success and consumerism in modern India. However, it is a ‘modern’ India with a decidedly nostalgic twist, in part emphasised by the use of Bollywood: In the money-​mad maelstrom of modern Mumbai lurks Harjinder makhi choos (‘flea-​ sucking miser’). A  man obsessed with hoarding his wealth according to Gandhian principles of relentless self-​sacrifice. He hates spending money, whether on his household or his children, who are desperate for marriage and the fashionable Bolly life-​style of Mumbai. (Tara Arts website) This reference to Gandhi brings to mind nationalist ideals and Hinduism, and indeed a key song in the show, as Mrunal Chavda in his analysis of the play points out, is the ‘the Hindu devotional hymn “Raghupathi raghav raja ram …”, a favourite of Mahatma Gandhi’ (Chavda, 2015: 9). This hymn is sung at the end of the play to indicate the restoration of peace and order. The use of Gandhian principles in relation to the caricature of the Miser therefore resolves the play with a happy ending, where national identity is also restored, creating a vision of a nostalgic utopian view of ‘new’ India that harks back to the old. This nostalgia is also seen in the use of well-​known songs from older Bollywood films, such as ‘Eyk, Dho,Teen’ from the 1951 film Awaara; ‘Eena Meena Deeka’ from the 1957 film Asha; and ‘Ai Dil hai muskil jeena yahan’ from the 1956 film C.I.D. Chavda suggests that this points to the songs and dances being used ‘to refer to the past, present, and to mental states’ of the characters (op. cit.: 10). Verma used musicians live on stage, but kept the convention of the actors lip-​syncing to a playback singer, Sohini Alam, to offer a re-​memory of the conventions of the films to audiences. Interestingly, Chavda points to a disagreement between Verma and Kohli about the use of Bollywood in this way. Verma appreciates the theatricality of the films, with the exaggerated archetypes and use of song and dance sequences. However, for Kohli, speaking nostalgically about the older films that are referenced in the production: I am not a fan of Bollywood. I think Bollywood dumbs down great Hindi cinema. I grew up watching amazing Hindi cinema, melodramatic cinema, beautifully constructed stories, beautiful songs, wonderful actors and I think this masala kind of Bollywood approach is massively disrespectful to what was once a vibrant film culture. So I am not really interested in Bollywood. I am pragmatist though; if the name brings people in perhaps, I can use it to show people another side of popular Indian culture. (in Chavda, 2015:11) As Kohli states, the use of Bollywood is certainly a means to attract audiences, both Asian and non-​Asian, to see the production, though it was also his name

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and popularity due to recognition from his work in mainstream media that was used as a draw for audiences. Hardish Virk was employed to work on marketing the show, and used similar strategies to those discussed in the previous chapter. His target markets were not just the usual Tara audiences, but also audiences who knew Kohli, and indeed in his community engagement work in Southall, Virk notes that while some people had heard of Tara Arts, everyone had heard of Kohli (Virk, 2013a). This was exploited further by having Kohli’s name on the publicity flyer for the show, though he was not performing in it. The setting of Kanjoos in a Punjabi family in India was also used by Virk, as he spoke in Punjabi to community members, and the very title of the play became an opportunity for marketing: A lot of shop owners were laughing at the title, ‘Kanjoos’ as they knew what it meant [‘miser’] and they started calling each other ‘Kanjoos’ as a joke. This made it easier to promote the show and for staff to ask us about the show. (ibid.) As well as the traditional Tara audiences, Virk aimed at creating new audiences for the show, who were ‘South Asian –​young; mobile, affluent, risk taking; Bollywood; TV and celebrity; businesses’ (Virk, 2013b). This plays into the themes of the production and the ‘Bollywoodisation’ of the transadaptation by aiming at a younger and wealthier South Asian audience, who engage with Bollywood and mainstream television. As well as South Asian audiences, the ‘East meets West’ aspect of the play was also aimed at non-​Asians who form part of the core of Tara’s regular audiences. In the production,Verma played on the archetypes of English characters as well as Indian, with the character of the matchmaker Frosine being a white English woman from Dorset, played by Caroline Kilpatrick, pictured in Figure 4.1. She is seen as the embodiment of the English person fascinated with all things Indian and mystical, becoming ‘more Indian than the Indian’, and talking of needing to balance her chakras. This playing on the mix of Indian and English is also seen in the music, where the strains of Bollywood are at one point interspersed with the theme from the film The Godfather, creating a wider frame of satirical reference. The process of the transadaptation of a European text, so often a strategy of Verma, was intended to explore his aesthetics of ‘Binglish’ as a ‘theatre of migration’, aimed at Asians and non-​Asians to create a popular piece of entertainment through ‘Bollywoodisation’ for both audiences. Verma believes that his reframing of the play in this way works because these audiences now understand much more about each other, and so he ‘can create a play that has been transposed to India and still for both communities to share’ (Verma, 2013). However, the production does not really reflect the experience of Asians in Britain, but rather presents nostalgic ideas of India for Asians through the use of Bollywood, and non-​Asians through

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Kilpatrick as Frosine and Antony Bunsee as Harjinder in Kanjoos. Source: Talula Sheppard, courtesy of Tara Arts. FIGURE 4.1  Caroline

the spectacle and aesthetics, offering an exoticisation of India even though this is undercut in the play.The choice to set the play in India rather than Britain could be seen as a strategy to entice a wider audience to see the ‘homeland’, which may not have happened if it had been transposed to contemporary Britain. This also lessens the potential of using the play to make a comment on issues of greed and consumerism that would certainly be relevant in the context of Britain today, and the distancing effect of the setting in India may also distance the audience from making this connection. However, the four markers of identity of British South Asians are all present in the play, and so this serves to reinforce a multivalent reading of these markers for both Asians and non-​Asians who came to see the show. For Verma, from the second generation, this sense of dislocation from the ‘homeland’ is perhaps more significant, but less so for younger generations of British South Asians who have a different relationship to both Britain and India. Tamasha also made the decision to use India as the setting for their transadaptation of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel, Wuthering Heights. The themes of love, jealousy and revenge, particularly in the first half of the novel, have resulted in the book occupying a unique place in British literature as the essence of romanticism. It is also a story that has been adapted many times in different forms; as Michael Billington points out, it has ‘prompted 23 plays, 14 musical versions, 16 TV and radio adaptations and 8 films’ (Billington, 2009). One of these adaptations was the Bollywood film Dil Diya Dard Liya (1966), directed by Abdul Rashid Kardar, and starring Dilip Kumar as Shankar (Heathcliff) and Waheeda Rehman as Roopa (Cathy). The film draws on Bollywood conventions of melodrama and heightened emotions, along

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with music and dance, to portray the drama and romanticism of the story. It focuses on just the first half of the novel, but in a twist at the end, Roopa does not die, and the two lovers are reunited after Shankar chooses love over revenge, and Ramesh (Hindley, played by Pran), comes to a very nasty end. There are echoes of the film in Tamasha’s transadaptation, which also focuses on just the first half of the novel, but allows the heroine to die at the end. The idea to create a theatrical ‘Bollywoodisation’ of the novel was suggested to Kristine Landon-​Smith and Sudha Bhuchar by actor Deepak Verma, who subsequently wrote the play. The setting was changed from nineteenth-​century Yorkshire to the deserts of eighteenth-​century Rajasthan, thus transposing both the place and time of the original. Landon-​Smith felt the transadaptation would work because the novel is ‘like a Bollywood plot to start off with’ (Landon-​Smith, 2009a), due to the focus on romance, melodrama, heightened emotions and star-​crossed lovers. Deepak Verma agrees, stating that ‘the heightened emotions of Brontë’s novel; its dreamlike quality and escapism. It’s pure Bollywood’, and that he wanted to create ‘theatre’s version of Slumdog Millionaire’ (in Allfree, 2009), referring to the hit British film set in India. However, the transferring of a Victorian English novel to eighteenth-​century Rajasthan produces a ‘Bollywoodisation’ of a piece of literature that moves it to a very different culture and time. In this way, it bears more similarity to the Bollywood historical epic films such as Umrao Jaan and Mughal-​E-​Azam which offer a romanticised version of Indian history and culture seen through the filtering of popular Indian cinema. The decision to set the play in the Thar Desert of Rajasthan was to make a connection between the harsh, bleak landscape of the desert with that of the Yorkshire moors, though keeping the English title of Brontë’s novel while having no reference to the house that it was named after. As Hickling indicates, the production and the novel ‘ultimately have so little in common you wonder why Tamasha chose to retain the title’ (Hickling, 2009). However, he cites Deepak Verma’s reasons for this decision: ‘The title itself is non-​negotiable,’ explains Verma. ‘It’s like Coca-​Cola –​ it’s instantly recognisable around the world. There are thousands of people who have never read Wuthering Heights. But everyone knows what it’s about’ (ibid.). This turns the novel into a global ‘brand’ that is recognisable and a draw to audiences, even if the production is not making a reference to the titular house. The setting allowed for the colourful exoticism of the costume and music of Rajasthan, as well as for portraying cultural events such as the camel races. This creates a romanticised and nostalgic view of India through the ‘Bollywoodisation’ of a European text, in contrast to Tara’s Kanjoos which was nostalgic, but also comedic and satirical. The consciously filmi focus of Wuthering Heights was seen in the publicity for the production with the picture of the two main characters imitating the style of Bollywood film posters, and the tagline ‘Brontë Goes to Bollywood’, making clear the cultural composite nature of the production, thereby marketing it to both fans of the novel and Indian cinema (see Figure 4.2). To keep to conventions of Bollywood films, Landon-​Smith took the decision to have the actors lip-​sync to a pre-recorded track of the songs in the play.Composer Felix

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image for Tamasha’s Wuthering Heights. Source: courtesy of Tamasha Theatre Company. FIGURE 4.2  Publicity

Cross, who has written music for many of Tamasha’s productions, worked with Sheema Mukherjee to create a score which draws on traditional Rajasthani folk and semi-​classical music, as well as Bollywood and Western musical theatre styles. This was orchestrated and arranged by renowned Indian musician Chandru. The instrumental music was then recorded in Bangalore in India, using Indian musicians. The singers later recorded the songs in the UK, with English lyrics by Felix Cross, on top of the recording from India. In keeping with Bollywood conventions, these singers were not the actual actors playing the parts (unlike in Fourteen Songs), but instead were well-​known singers from a range of musical backgrounds including Hindustani music, Bollywood films and British Asian theatre. Landon-​Smith states that, ‘This is British Bollywood. We have British Asian singers recording the songs for the show.They have their own following, and many will be coming to see them’ (Landon-​Smith, 2009b). This statement of being ‘British Bollywood’ due to the involvement of British Asian musicians and actors makes clear that the production is intended to be within the framework of British theatrical tradition, but with ‘Bollywood’ conventions and an Indian setting. Landon-​Smith points to some themes from the novel

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that also relate to Indian culture, such as love being eternal, death, haunting and particularly the idea of fate and fortune. She states that the production is ‘steeped in Hindu society and religion’ (ibid.), and there are many references to Hindu deities and rites in the play. In the key scene of the funeral of Cathy, who is transposed into the character Shakuntala in the play, her traditional Hindu funeral of a cremation would normally be followed by throwing her ashes into the water to release her soul into the afterlife. However, the character of Heathcliff who has become Krishnan in the production, refuses to scatter her ashes, and instead keeps them in an urn in order to prevent her soul from being free, so she can come back to haunt him. The Hindu belief in reincarnation is also a theme, and it is stated that the two of them must have known each other in a past life, and will be together in their next incarnation. While this focus on specific aspects of Hinduism does not encompass all Asian communities, the themes will be familiar, and also adds to the romantic and nostalgic flavour of the transadaptation (see Figure 4.3). The character of Heathcliff has become part of postcolonial discourse in examining his positioning as the racialised ‘other’ in the novel. This fits in with

Patel as Shakuntala and Pushpinder Chani as Krishnan in Wuthering Heights. Source: courtesy of Tamasha Theatre Company. FIGURE 4.3 Youkti

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both Edward Said’s notions of orientalism in European literature, and Homi Bhabha’s ideas of hybridity and ambivalence discussed in Chapter 2, where the racialised dark stranger is seen as a figure of attraction, as well as hate and fear. Heathcliff is described by Mr Linton in the novel as being ‘a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway. [He is] dark, almost as if he came from the devil’ (Brontë, 2011: 32). This mention of ‘lascar’ references some of the Indians who were present in Britain during the nineteenth century, and equates the colonial subject with being unholy in Christian terms. Heathcliff is also defined by the label ‘gypsy’ from the start as a derogatory term for ‘otherness’ and associations with criminality. The transference of the novel to Rajasthan has the potential to explore this further, due to the presence of the ‘gypsy’ nomadic tribes such as the Kalbeliya in Rajasthan who are of the lowest caste in the society, and often perceived with both fascination and fear due to their cultural traditions of dance and music, as well as their association with snakes and often being labelled as criminals. Even though Krishnan was found in Bombay, he is similarly described as a ‘gypsy’ and other names that make him into the primitive ‘other’ from the moment he arrives in Rajasthan, being called a ‘banjara’ (Verma et al., 2009: 10), meaning ‘gypsy’, and ‘junglee’ (op. cit.: 13), a term of insult for someone who looks like they are wild and from the jungle. He is also labelled as a devil, and someone who has bad fate and will bring bad fortune, with the character of Yusuf, the Muslim servant, singing that Krishnan will bring ‘kayamat’, the Urdu word for judgement day, to the house: I’ve a worrying sense of foreboding Or our happiness here Eroding away And I’ve had this fear Since he came to stay Kayamat is coming The darkness will grow. […] He’s a junglee, a stray dog, and no one’s understood That we cannot tell if his bloodline is good. If bad kismet [fate] comes to infect this house Who will say the dua [prayer] to protect this house? (op. cit.: 12–​13) Krishnan returns after a three-​year absence following Shakuntala’s wedding to Vijay, and arrives having acquired wealth, wearing expensive clothes, and looking like one of the Thakurs, or landowners, such as Shakuntala’s husband. In the novel, Heathcliff is described as ‘a dark-​skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman: that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire’ (Brontë, 2011: 4). Heathcliff thus becomes a hybrid figure: a dark-​skinned gypsy ‘other’ in Western clothing and behaving like a gentleman.This ambivalent mixing can be seen within

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the frame of Bhabha’s notion of mimicry, where the racialised hybrid creates a sense of the uncanny which destabilises the ‘norm’, and is ‘almost the same, but not quite’ (Bhabha, 1994: 86) or as he then states, ‘almost the same, but not white’ (op. cit., 89). The fear that this figure generates is compounded by Heathcliff –​and Krishnan –​ being portrayed as clever and cunning, as well as having power due to wealth, and so not fitting into the representation of the colonised ‘other’ that is a disempowered victim. Despite the clothes, Krishnan’s ‘gypsy’ blood is still present within him, seen when he refuses to let Shakuntala’s soul free, and Yusuf states, ‘He will not rest until he has brought kayamat. Allah jane, what gypsy blood flows through his veins’ (Verma et al., 2009: 69). In this way, Krishnan is still perceived as the racialised ‘other’. The setting in Rajasthan has the potential to make a comment on issues of caste, class and colour within Indian society. Although this is present through the re-​memory of Brontë’s original and aspects of the transadaptation, it is somewhat disguised due to the ‘Bollywoodisation’ of the novel, where the romance, nostalgia and melodrama tend to keep the production within the realm of an exoticised, even orientalised version of the story through the desire to create popular entertainment, though made by an Asian-​led company. As Billington states, the production had ‘a kitsch splendour’, but ‘there is more to Brontë than we get here: not just the complex use of flashbacks but the idea of a pattern of revenge working itself through to the point of exhaustion’ (Billington, 2009). He uses the phrases ‘very pleasant’ and ‘agreeable spectacle’ (ibid.), indicating that the production lacked the depth and intensity of the novel, and by focusing on the romance and ‘Bollywoodisation’, reduces the story to a more superficial experience that does not offer any new understanding of either the novel, or South Asian culture. The ‘Bollywoodisation’ and transadaptation of European literature into stage productions set in India, generates the question as to whether this process has the ability to transcend colonial readings through a postcolonial reworking, or if it instead becomes an exotic use of Indian forms and aesthetics in a Western story. Parv Bancil has criticised the transadaptation of European literature as stated earlier, because he believes this process can reinforce rather than challenge colonial representations. However, Vincent Ebrahim, actor and former Associate of Tara Arts, defends the adaptation of European literature as being ‘the act of “inhabiting the language” and, by extension, the culture of Europe; laying claim to it, appropriating it, and subtly pushing at the envelope of the cultural consciousness of Britain from the inside’ (Ebrahim, 1997: 371). The multivalent readings of this form of transadaptation, particularly when filtered through the process of ‘Bollywoodisation’, are complicated further by both Kanjoos and Wuthering Heights being set in India, so questioning the relevance for and representation of identities of South Asians in Britain. The production discussed in the next section is set in contemporary Britain, however, the incorporation of Bollywood continues to offer contradictory readings and meanings of and for the communities and audiences, particularly in the representation of the dancing woman in the films and on stage.

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The dancing girl: the mujra and multiculturalism in Wah! Wah! Girls Wah! Wah! Girls was written by Tanika Gupta, co-​produced by Kneehigh theatre company from Cornwall with Sadler’s Wells and Theatre Royal Stratford East, in association with Hall for Cornwall. It was directed by the then Artistic Director of Kneehigh, Emma Rice, and the co-​director was Pravesh Kumar from Rifco. This sets the tone for a production that celebrates multicultural Britain with the ‘Bollywoodisation’ of theatrical forms and narratives. The play was part of the London 2012 Festival to celebrate the London Olympics that year, and is in keeping with the performance of multicultural conviviality that was demonstrated at the opening ceremony of the Olympics that was directed by Danny Boyle, who had previously directed Slumdog Millionaire, even while also retelling the story of the British Empire. The movement in the ceremony from the ‘Green and Pleasant Land’ of the nostalgic view of rural British life, through the Industrial Revolution and both World Wars, followed by the arrival of the Windrush and new communities changing the cultural life of the country, was also a narrative of the changes in the ethnic make-​up of the country, and particularly London, from when the city previously hosted the Olympics in 1948. Opening ceremonies are a way for a nation to present its current narrative to the world. In Danny Boyle’s ceremony, performers of all ethnicities were seen in virtual colour-​blind casting throughout, with a mixed-​race family living in the house that became the British music sequence, and Akram Khan and his company given a prominent place in the ceremony. And yet, this was just a few short months before the government-​sponsored ‘Go Home’ vans started appearing on the streets of London, making a clear statement that not all members of communities were as welcome as was suggested in the ceremony (see Jones et al., 2017, for further information on the politics and policies of the ‘Go Home’ campaign). Wah! Wah! Girls is set in the East End of London, also the home of the Olympic stadium, and focuses on a South Asian mujra dancing-​g irls club, the women who work there and members of the multicultural communities who also live in the area, including African-​Caribbean and Polish.The play makes a deliberate reference to the mujra dancing girls from India, particularly in the way that they have been represented in Bollywood films. The rise in public attention to these dancing clubs, which are usually also sex clubs in both Britain and India since the beginning of the new millennium, focuses on the exploitation of the women by promoters, and also how the women become the locus of debate for the morality of the nation. This was also discussed in Chapter 1 which demonstrated how the figure of the lead female character in Bollywood films shifts according to changing discourses of morality and nationhood, and is seen to embody or contest those values.The image of the solo dancing girl is also one that has undergone many changes in Indian history and society, at times in response to British imperialist notions of morality, and the echoes and re-​memory of this are still present in the representation of the figure of the dancing woman in Bollywood film and on the British stage.

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Part of the reason for the multivalent readings of the solo female dancer has been the image of the courtesan who is both dancer and prostitute. However, this is a reductive interpretation of complex performance forms and contexts, and engages with a particular view of the tawaif (tawa’if, tavayaf) courtesan figure from the North Indian Islamic Mughal period who performs mujra dance. These: female singers and dancers have long been important and highly visible exponents of elite music and dance. It is likely that the tawa’ifs were the most feted performers of North Indian art music from the late eighteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth. (Schofield, 2012: 4–​5) They were: [h]‌ereditary female performers [who were] not one homogenous group, and the most refined of them were urbane, literate, and highly trained in the performance of poetry, vocal music, and dance. These women, whom we now tend to call courtesans or tavayafs, were for more than a century among the primary culture bearers of north Indian vocal music and dance. Associated with the decadent and effete courts of Muslim aristocrats, connected with brothels and an illegal underclass, and often Muslim themselves, the tavayafs found themselves pushed to the margins of musical society by the reforms of the early twentieth century. (Walker, 2010: 281–​282) The idea of ‘courtesan’ was often not a prostitute in the modern Western sense, but rather a highly trained performer cultivated in the arts of music, song, poetry and dance. Usually living in female-​owned establishments, she offered men an escape from the real world into one of emotion and music, and poetry and music were a means to engage the senses and emotions with a form of love that was not necessarily just sexual, but rather an emotionally and spiritually heightened state. It was this that created the sense of the ‘danger’ of the women as it lured the watching man into a physical and emotional ‘conversation’ of love and longing: The reason has to do with the place and danger of music itself in Mughal male society, and the irresistible combination of love and music that the courtesan embodied. Music in Mughal thought existed fundamentally to move the emotions. […] Both performer and listener had to be fully engaged mentally, emotionally and bodily in the music in order for this catharsis to occur. In a culture that viewed passionate attachment as dangerous, the patronage of music –​the sonic embodiment of emotion –​was potentially highly transgressive, and not only because it opened the patron up to the risk of becoming excessively attached to the music itself. Specifically, of all the emotions, music was thought to possess most profoundly the ability to arouse feelings of love

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in the listener. And, paradoxically, the literature makes it clear that this arousal of sentiment through music was something eagerly to be sought after. […] It is important to note that love and the grief of separation from the beloved have for centuries been valorised in both Persian and Hindavi poetry, and during the Mughal period formed the most cherished themes of art-​music genres such as khayāl. (Schofield, 2012: 161) In this way, the space of danger and liminality in the kothas, the houses where the performances took place, was not just about the woman performing the music, dance and poetry, but the art forms themselves that create the danger and enticement through arousing emotions, even if this did not lead to the physical act of sex afterwards. The women were certainly at the margins of society, and yet also paradoxically had a place of esteem within it as the bearers of tradition, sometimes performing at court for wealthy patrons, and could themselves have a good income and own property. The mujra dance form is itself a composite, consisting of the North Indian classical dance form of kathak, mixed with different forms of poetry and music such as the ghazal or thumri depending on the preference of the man who was paying for the performance. Thatra explains the sequence of the performance, which is usually how it is also represented in Bollywood films: Mujra was performed in the mehfil [event] by the tawaif, and was a synthesis of poetry, gestures, music and dance. The tawaif, accompanied by the tabla, the sarangi and the harmonium, expressed deep emotions associated with the sringararasa with a focus on nakhra or nazakat, through various hand gestures, facial expressions and the Kathak dance style. The performer’s seated posture made room for the expression of ada and abhinaya, which was directed to attract a wealthy patron. The vocal repertoire comprised mostly thumri, dadra, ghazal and quawalli. Other women vocalists provided a chorus to the performance. It is apparent from the accounts of courtesans that they were initially trained in both singing and dancing. (Thatra, 2016: 200–​201) After this initial phase of being seated and singing, she would then rise to perform the dance at an increasing speed, and this dance would ‘expand on the theme of the song text but incorporate movements of the whole body, including characteristic postures and stylized walks’ (Walker, 2010: 282), as well as the facial expressions and mudras associated with kathak. The performance for the man was to allow him to escape from the mundanity of his life, possibly including his wife and family, and enter into another world of love and beauty created through the performance of the tawaif. This performance form was disrupted by the British colonisers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as part of Victorian moral reform in India,

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where the British labelled not just the tawaifs but also the devadasi temple dancers in South India as being prostitutes, as part of the anti-​nautch or anti-​dance discourse that reframed the courtesan system to being one of immorality and decadence.This drove many of the dancers into an illicit underworld in order to survive, in effect ironically driving them to the very prostitution that the British were trying to ban. During the rise of the Indian nationalist movement and in post-​independence India, ‘classical’ solo dance forms were reconstructed to become the embodiment of the height of classical traditions in India, and as such all references to the supposedly sexualised representation of the tawaif were erased, and kathak became an elite form of classical dance that was separated from its former associations. However, the fascination with the figure of the mujra dancer continued, and was portrayed in heavily romanticised and nostalgic forms in historical films such as Pakeezah, Mughal-​E-​Azam, Umrao Jaan and Devdas. In these films, she is usually seen as a tragic figure who is cultured and highly trained in the arts, but also a victim of the world she inhabits. She falls in love with a man she cannot have, and ends up in exile or loss at the end of the film. She is still very much under the fix of the male gaze, to use Mulvey’s term (Mulvey, 1975), both in her performing in the films, and also as part of the film industry: The courtesan has been a popular figure in film, where her attractions give rise to a variety of pleasures in the audience. She is portrayed as a victim of men’s lust and as an object of the viewer’s pity, but also delights the audience in being the object of the male gaze as she dances for his entertainment. The combination of a beautiful actress and the opportunity for incorporating poetry, music and dance into the narrative are important, but viewers also enjoy the spectacle of the body, together with the elaborate scenery and clothing, tied to a certain nostalgia arising from the decline and disappearance of courtesan culture. (Dwyer and Patel, 2002: 69) This nostalgia is for a ‘lost, pre-​colonial stately India’ (Nijhawan, 2009: 103), one which represents the heights of classical art as well as of Islam and Muslim culture in a contemporary world where there is much contestation around portrayals of Islam. In addition, the representations of: courtesans in Bollywood are always placed on society’s fringes, vulnerable in a male-​dominated world, but are configured as women with big hearts, creating nostalgia for a lost, pre-​colonial stately India. Courtesans are interestingly often deployed in Bollywood to represent the highest of feminine virtue –​ sacrificing her passions for the man’s and for safeguarding and upholding the norms of civil society. Rather than transgress on societal rules and civilized customs, the courtesan gives up her own desires, sacrifices her ‘rights’ with her lover, for the superior rights of his wife, his work, his social responsibilities toward family and state. (ibid.)

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This creates a multivalent representation of the courtesan in the films, which can be borne out by the actress that plays her. In the 2002 version of Devdas, the character of taiwaf Chandramukhi is played by Madhuri Dixit, whose public persona as an actress in real life seeped into her performances in films, where: she has been a landmark dancing-​lady for many years. She was one of the first to bring together successfully the goddess, dancer, worker, wife all in one body and it is in her roles that we first see a change towards the acceptance of the female dancer. (op. cit., 104) It is perhaps her persona as an actress that creates a more sympathetic response to the character of Chandramukhi, and allows for a popular mainstream representation of a female dancer who was placed at the margins of society and ultimately loses the love of Devdas. As well as the solo female dancer being incorporated into Bollywood films, there has been a spilling out of dancer-​as-​prostitute from the historical discourses and films into the development of the dancing sex clubs in India and the UK. The clubs in India arose in response to the economic liberalisation of the country in the early 1990s. As the style of dance in the films changed and also became more liberal and often sexualised, dancing bars in cities such as Mumbai began to emerge as men had greater access to disposable income, and could again afford the fantasy of paying for a woman to dance for him, but this time usually with an expectation of sex as well. The bars therefore grew out of a process of increased globalisation and neo-​ liberalism which create ‘dystopias as well as utopias’ (Morcom, 2015: 290), and the re-​memory of the heightened time of the Mughal era is re-​performed in a modern way through men throwing money at the dancing girls, where they: consciously enjoyed acting out a fantasy of being a nawab, one of the former nobility who wiled away their times with courtesans […]. It was this kind of prestige the customer gained (or thought he gained), a kind of royal right to women and entertainment by women. (op. cit.: 302) The style of dance in the bars was certainly far removed from the classicism of kathak, and even though labelled as ‘Bollywood’, is also dissimilar to the highly choreographed dance in the films that suggests the mood of the character. Instead, in the bars, the dance is: improvised with anything from seductive strutting and hair-​tossing to more elaborate dancing and acting out the words of the song […] all laced with intense eye contact (for certain customers). In bar dancing there was an emphasis on seduction and an implication of sexual availability, whereas with Bollywood dance, the focus is on choreography, energy, and skill. (op. cit.: 303)

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Thus, the newly liberalised economy generated illicit forms of entertainment based on the reconstruction of previous traditions. The figure of the woman as the embodiment of morality was also repeated as it was in colonial India, and in 2005 the bars were banned by the government of Maharashtra, though this was subsequently overturned finally by the Supreme Court in 2013. The women in the bars have been the subject of recent study (e.g. Morcom, 2014 and 2015), as well as the multivalent embodiment of the re-​memory of the taiwaf in a very different way to how she has been portrayed in the films. The mujra dancing girl performing for men in sex clubs has also migrated to Britain. Though existing underground for some time previously, this became public in the early 2000s as a result of a police investigation into the murder of one of the promoters of the clubs. A report in The Independent in 2000 highlighted the plight of the Indian women in the mujra clubs in London, Bradford and Leicester, where: [s]‌muggled into Britain, the girls perform corrupted versions of traditional Asian dances to Bollywood soundtracks in bars and restaurants. But the performance is merely a showcase for the real business –​prostitution. Promoters can earn more than £10,000 a night, while the girls are lucky to receive pocket money. (Brown and Narayan, 2000) The report cited Delhi University historian Dr Uma Chakravarthi who states that: Indians abroad who patronise mujra dancing may feel that they are tapping into the culture of their homeland. It plays on their nostalgia for all things Indian.While in fact they are going along to these shows for sex, they explain it to themselves in terms of keeping traditional culture alive. (in ibid.) A later report on the clubs in The Observer offers the following explanation from one of the regular attendees of a club: There was always an element of suggestiveness in the mujra tradition –​like all dance to some extent –​but nowadays it’s all sex and no art.Today going to a mujra is basically just like going to a brothel. Sometimes they do away with the dancing all together. The girls wear tight clothes, lots of make-​up and are very friendly.You are served drinks first, then the madam comes over and asks you to pick out a girl that you like. She is then introduced to you and that’s when you start to negotiate over the price. (in Thompson, 2003) In this way, the clubs in Britain form a space of nostalgic re-​memory of the ‘homeland’ of India through a fantasy recreation of the tradition of the mujra, which is

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transformed into the exploitation of women as part of the sex trade in Britain. These women from both India and the UK become part of the illicit underworld, controlled by their pimps and promoters, with little recourse to institutional help. This transnational trade in the reconstruction of the mujra tradition is brought about through globalisation and neo-​liberalism in both countries, and serves to maintain the body and image of the dancing woman in the place of male gaze and sexual domination by the men who visit the clubs. It is this type of mujra club that is the setting for Wah! Wah! Girls,1 but one that offers a sanitised view of the reality of the girls in the clubs, and instead focuses on the markers of identity of culture clash and inter-​generational conflict as well as Bollywood, with the contestation between tradition and modernity seen in the styles of dance as well as attitudes to morality, and Bollywood film representations of the mujra dancers become woven into the narrative of the play. As stated previously, the play was directed by Emma Rice and co-​produced by Kneehigh, a company known for its vibrant physically based storytelling productions. Rice had no prior experience with Bollywood or British Asian theatre, but felt it was a good opportunity: When somebody says, ‘Would you like to work on a new British Bollywood musical? Make a beautiful story, work with a completely mixed, exciting diverse cast’. ‘Yes’ is the answer. I’m going to take glamour and big, bold dramatic storylines from Bollywood and I’m going to bring to it some naughtiness, and a British ability to not take oneself too seriously. (Kneehigh, 2011) This indicates her desire to place the Bollywood elements in a British context, but keep the style and drama of Bollywood, and make a piece of popular entertainment. For playwright Tanika Gupta, the play is ‘written very much in a Bollywood melodramatic style’ (ibid.), indicating the level of melodrama and heightened characters and playing style in the production. The plot focuses on Soraya (Sophiya Haque), originally from India, who runs the club in East London with her son Kabir (Tariq Jordan) and four dancers. Sita (Natasha Jayetileke) arrives from Leeds, running away from her violent brother, and wanting to learn dance from Soraya. Sita and Kabir fall in love with each other, but Sita’s desire to experiment with dance forms rather than sticking to the classical style that Soraya teaches results in Soraya kicking them both out of the club. Meanwhile, Soraya has been attracted to her African-​ Caribbean neighbour Cal (Delroy Atkinson), and tells the story of her life through ‘Bollywood fantasies’ of re-​enacting songs and scenes from films to show that she had been sold as a young village girl by her father to a brothel-​keeper who trained her to be a mujra. This essentially follows the plot of the film and titular character of Umrao Jaan, who similarly was taken from a village and trained to be a mujra in a brothel in Lucknow. Back in London, Soraya allows Kabir and Sita back to the club, but Sita’s brother arrives and tries to kill her. He is stopped by Mansoor (Tony Jayawardena), the owner of the nearby laundry who turns out to be Soraya’s

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long-​lost father and, having saved Sita, gains her forgiveness just before dying. The play ends with the girls leaving the club to start their own businesses or continue their education, and Soraya is able to admit her love for Cal. The story is framed by the character of Bindi (Rina Fatania), an elderly Asian woman who watches Bollywood films on television, and the action of the play emerges through her television screen. At the end it is revealed that she is a learned doctor who also loves watching films, and it is ambiguous as to how much of the preceding story was real as opposed to her imagination in a dream. A key theme in the play is that of tradition versus modernity, seen particularly in the use of dance.There were two choreographers for the production: kathak dancer Gauri Shamra Tripathi, who has worked with Akram Khan, and Bollywood choreographer Javed Sanadi.These styles of dances were reflected in the choreography, with the classical forms of kathak being interspersed with hip and arm movements from Bollywood as well as street dance to suggest a composite performance of contemporary Britain (see Figure 4.4 for an illustration of two of the different styles of dance and costume in the production). For Tripathi,‘it’s an interesting marriage of the Bollywood tradition of dancing, the Indian classical tradition of kathak dancing, and here-​and-​now very contemporary body language, body styles, and a street-​like culture that we all see around us’ (Kneehigh, 2011). The tension between these forms reflects the marker of identity of culture clash in the play, as Soraya wants to hold on to the high classical form of kathak, rather than having it ‘contaminated’ by the ‘lesser’ popular form of Bollywood. Kabir wants to modernise the club by having Bollywood lap-​dancing sessions, as well as dance classes and Asian stag nights, but Soraya refutes this, saying, ‘People still come to watch my old-​fashioned girls’ (Gupta, 2012: 20). This ‘old-​fashioned tradition’ is based in the performance of the mujra, which she relates back to a nostalgic and historical lineage of dancing girls who have been trained in the arts: I will teach you everything I know. How to coax with your eyes, plead with your body, how to sing like an angel and show love through your words. But when you dance, that’s when the gods themselves will peek out of the heavens to watch you and the goddesses will smart with envy. […] Baijis [courtesans] were mentioned in pre-​Vedic texts and were refined women, they knew Urdu and Sanskrit, they were learned and intellectual and could entertain men with intelligent conversation; they taught the sons of kings and noblemen the etiquette of how to take paan, how to drink, even how to tie their shoes. They knew a thousand texts, they were educated and free, not subservient like wives. […] Here at Wah! Wah! Girls, we aim to ease men’s burdens, to throw off the heavy cloak of responsibility and shake off the spectre of despondency. We indulge men’s senses with beautiful dances. I want you to hold back and slowly build –​to coax as opposed to forcing yourself on the audience.Think of the gravity of your movement, the hold of the body –​the art of Tharav [rhythm of the dance]. (op. cit.: 36, 49)

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styles of dance and costume in Wah! Wah! Girls. Source: Steve Tanner, courtesy of Kneehigh. FIGURE 4.4  Contrasting

This is a very idealised and romanticised portrayal of the life of the girls in the clubs, and certainly does not reflect the stories discussed earlier of the sexual exploitation of women in contemporary India and the UK. This sanitised version is articulated by Soraya who has a strong sense of the morality of the dance and the dancers, and that the dance is about entertainment, not prostitution.

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Sita auditioned for the club by dancing to the song ‘Choli Ke Pecche Kya-​Hai’ from the film Khalnayak (1993). The song asks, ‘What is under your blouse?’ to which the answer is ‘My heart’, but also has an innuendo of the body. The film was initially refused release unless the song and dance sequence was edited out due to this innuendo, but it was ultimately an ‘overnight success once it was released unedited’ (Shresthova, 2004: 97). The stage production therefore plays on this, and Soraya states that Sita’s modern Bollywood dancing is ‘too suggestive’ (Gupta, 2012: 25) in contrast to the restrained quality of kathak. This relates back to the idea of the first generation of migrants in a diaspora wanting to hold on to the ‘purity’ and authenticity of a form of performance as was discussed in Chapter 2, and that this also represents the nostalgic idea of the ‘purity’ of the culture from the ‘homeland’ that has been left behind. Later in the play, Soraya says to Sita: I do not run a brothel here! They are not vulgarly dressed Asian women offering titillating jerks to Bollywood numbers.Those kind of Mujra dancers don’t have the musical tradition nor any classical dance steps to speak of. In the old days the Baijis knew how to entertain men through their conversation. […] I am teaching you how to perfect the Indian dance form for entertainment for everyone. (op. cit.: 50) For her, the classical form of kathak is separated from the sexualised form of Bollywood, resulting in a disjuncture of high/​low culture and morality, as well as tradition versus modernity. Sita responds to this with a remark from a Miley Cyrus-​ style perspective: ‘It’s a statement –​we’re not afraid of our sexuality anymore’ (op. cit.: 51). Her portrayal as a ‘modern girl’ who is rejecting the tradition of the classical and thereby becoming immoral is a contradiction to the original positioning of kathak within the mujra, but more in keeping with the revised reconstruction of the dance as part of the Nationalist movement. This reinforces the culture clash of generations, as well as the binaries of tradition-​modernisation, restraint-​freedom and India-​Britain. There are moments of the re-​ performance of sequences and references to Bollywood films in the play, particularly Umrao Jaan and the 2002 version of Devdas. When Soraya is telling her story, there are flashback sequences that transport the setting to India to both perform the song, and show that Soraya is living in a world of fantasy to escape the reality of the horrors of her earlier life. In the first of these fantasy sequences, a scenery change reveals the performance of the song ‘Dil Cheez Kya-​Hai’ from Umrao Jaan performed in the film by Rekha and sung by Asha Bhosle. The stage version copies the film with watching men sitting on silk cushions, and one of the other actresses performing the young Soraya. The second ‘Bollywood fantasy’ is the re-​performing of the famous song ‘Maar Dala’ from Devdas. This was acted by Madhuri Dixit in the film, mentioned earlier, and sung

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by Kavita Krishnamurthy. The stage version again opens onto a scene from the historical Mughal period, with the younger Soraya dressed as a classical kathak dancer performing the scene as in the film, beginning on the floor, then rising to dance kathak with other dancers behind her. In the film, these were all female, but in the stage production there were also men dancing in order to have a larger group of dancers to add to the spectacle. At the end of the play, Soraya admits to Cal that she finds reality hard, which is why she has been living in the fantasy world of the film, and shows she loves him by performing ‘Dil Cheez Kya-​Hai’ just for him. This is the first time that there has been a portrayal of a man watching a woman dance in the club in London, rather than the fictionalised film versions in India. That she is now dancing for love rather than money contributes to the sanitised version of the mujra clubs portrayed in the play, in contrast to the reality of such clubs found in London. The play also offers an idealised representation of a convivial multicultural London, where characters from different communities and ethnicities live and work together. The only moment of community tension is from the bad-​tempered Mansoor, who turns out to be Soraya’s father, when he says about Pavel, ‘Bloody Poles, taking all our jobs. Go back to your own country!’ (Gupta, 2012:  15). Mansoor’s first song shows his ill-​nature, which is reflected in his rejection of London as the golden land of opportunity: I used to dream of golden pavements But instead I found enslavement Jobs below me –​neighbours all so rude –​ Worked all hours just for rent and food. I hate this town –​this sprawl Stinking rotten from decline and fall Chancers, drifters, hustlers, gangsters, Whores and tarts and thugs and thieves. (op. cit.: 14) This is in contrast to African-​Caribbean Cal, a much more sympathetic character, for whom London is romanticised as a place of migration, even while he has a nostalgic longing for the ‘homeland’ of his ancestors: A crumbling mother England Called my people to her land They blew in with the Windrush Breathed new life all around […] I love this town, these lights, these fading streets The City’s soul, its heart, this life is sweet. (op. cit.: 32–​33)

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London is represented as idealised in two other ways that contrast with the reality of the mujra. One is that, as in the original form, many of the dancers in India and the UK are Muslim, however, in the play, apart from Soraya, there is only one Muslim girl in the club and the others, including Sita, are Hindu. This sidesteps dealing with complex issues of Islamophobia in contemporary Britain. The play also presents a heterosexual view of the mujra which does not reflect the fact that many of the dancers in India and the UK are boys and men, thus queering the space of the dance. There is one male dancer in the club, Omar, and while he has a prominent place in the dancing sequences, his story remains untold. Therefore, the play performs a safe and conservative view of heterosexual, multicultural and convivial London. This safe view relates to the dancing girls as well, partly in their not being prostitutes but also, unlike in the films, they are able to escape the world of the mujra and become ‘modern’. Two of them start their own business selling tie-​dyed versions of Olympic scarves on a market stall, and Sita returns to college to complete her accountancy course, as well as having her (inter-​faith) relationship with Kabir. This resolves the culture clash and inter-​generational conflict in a convivial and conservative way, in keeping with Bollywood films from the early 1990s such as Hum Aapke Hain Koun …! discussed in the previous chapter. The ‘Bollywoodisation’ of the story in Wah! Wah! Girls creates entertainment and spectacle, but also denies the reality of the life of the girls in clubs in the UK. Previous plays have attempted to portray a more realistic view of these clubs. Yasmin Whittaker Khan’s play Bells produced by Kali Theatre in 2005 was set in a Pakistani club in Leicester.The play offered a stronger presentation of the struggle of the dancers, both male and female, however, this was also couched in the aesthetics of Lollywood, or the Pakistani film industry. Parminder Sekhon and Shakila Maan’s play Not Just An Asian Babe produced by Mehtab Theatre in 1997 creates a harder-​ hitting presentation of the clubs, and shows that they existed before the 2000 report and police investigation. Sekhon was inspired to write the play by seeing a poster on Southall Broadway of two Asian women posing in their underwear, and also from reading Hanif Kureishi’s experience of visiting a sex club and seeing Pakistani dancing girls in his essay ‘Wild Women, Wild Men’, published in Granta in 1992. The play is a graphic description in image and language of the Kit Kat Club, showing the hypocrisy of the Pakistani businessman who owns the club and yet is also seen as a respectable and religious Muslim. The monologues spoken by the character of Nasreen in the play use Islamic religious imagery to show her grappling with her relationship to religion. In one monologue, she uses the imagery of the Islamic vision of paradise, and of becoming one of the houri, the 72 virgins that await a shahid, or a martyr, in paradise, in contrast to the reality of working as a prostitute: When other girls were smoking cigarettes in the toilets, lovebites, stilettos and pencil skirts, after-​school discos and Wimpy bars, I sweated over my hadis, I dreamt of arriving in paradise.You were going to reward me for my obedience, my submission.You were going to make me your divine houri. It is hard

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for you to be in so many places to protect me from the smell of 30 men in an upstairs room waiting for something to happen, there are so many unforeseen things that can happen to a girl. Tape running out, Julie blacking out, an unfinished film can be so disappointing. Samina Begum and me holding our fannies in one hand, our Koran sharifs in the other.You can’t be everywhere looking after everyone. So if my flesh, my blood soaks the front room light at 2am every night, my image distorted no longer, the loving virgin from Allah’s peaceful garden, then am I the whore? Am I the houri? I am the upstairs backroom bedspread sex, I  am the constant bloom of pages and pages of deflowered virgins from Allah’s peaceful garden. (Sekhon and Maan, 1997) This, coupled with portrayals of homosexual sex and a lesbian porn film, make the play into a powerful portrayal of the illicit reality of the clubs. However, despite having a positive response from audiences at the time, the play has not been performed nor published since, and it is unlikely that it could be performed today without causing protests from some conservative members of the communities, and theatres and producers are much less willing to take a risk on a production which could cause offence since the events surrounding Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s Behzti at the Birmingham Rep in 2004. These events have been discussed elsewhere (Cochrane, 2012), but the visible and disruptive protests by some members of the Sikh communities that were shown in the media have led to a tendency for mainstream venues to prefer safe and popular productions by and representing South Asian communities in Britain. Janet Steele, director of Kali Theatre which promotes new writing by women, states that the result of the protests against Behzti was not just a focus on popular and safe productions, but also a silencing of women’s voices on stage speaking about issues of abuse and violence: I was in rehearsals at Birmingham Rep for Behzti (Dishonour), a play by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti that depicted a rape in a Sikh temple. By 20 December the production was forced to close early, as a result of violent protests. The police were unable to guarantee the safety of the actors, audience or theatre staff, so the management had no option but to stop the show. It was a terrifying and deeply upsetting time, made even more tragic to us –​a company of South Asian artists. Quite apart from the death threats against the playwright, there was no other play on at the time by a South Asian writer. This made the enforced silence even more painful. We were struggling to get our voices heard. We still are. (Steele, 2012) This can be situated within Chandra Mohanty’s articulation of transnational feminism discussed in Chapter 2, where the voice and experience of marginalised women are silenced in the process of globalisation and neo-​imperialism. Despite

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being written and directed by women, and the stories of South Asian women being placed on a mainstream stage, the ‘Bollywoodisation’ in Wah! Wah! Girls offers a safe and entertaining production that belies the reality of the clubs. Its performance in mainstream theatre spaces contributes to the complex issues of representation of women dancing for the male gaze that is found in the song and dance sequences in the films, and reproduced on stage. Through this, women remain the embodiment of the discourses surrounding the morality of the nations of both India and the UK. The Bollywood song and dance sequences in the production are performed with great energy and skill by the cast, and the play showed the strength and ability of the British South Asian actors, particularly Rina Fatania, who is renowned for her comedic performances, as well as the late Sophiya Haque, and Natasha Jayetileke and Tony Jayawardena who would subsequently play Mr and Mrs Bhamra in Bend It Like Beckham: the musical discussed in the next chapter. The production was able to draw in and entertain audiences, however, it acts more as a nostalgic re-​memory of the classic Bollywood films about mujras, which were themselves a romanticised re-​historicising of the Mughal period, rather than a meaningful interrogation of the plight of South Asian women in sex clubs, or the realities of life in contemporary London.

Bollywood pantomimes and entertainment spectacles Bollywood has been used on stage in Britain in forms that move beyond the ‘Bollywoodisation’ of drama and musicals, and instead presents popular entertainment extravaganzas to engage South Asian and Western audiences in the enjoyment and spectacle of a theatricalised version of Bollywood. One of these approaches that has taken a composite strategy by mixing Bollywood with a Western theatrical form is Tara Arts’s Bollywood pantomimes. Pantomime was one of the forms of popular entertainment that developed in the nineteenth century along with melodrama and vaudeville that had an influence on the development of Indian cinema, discussed in Chapter  1. To make a direct correlation between the two through a hybridising of the forms in a strategy of transadaptation that would suit a British context is explained by Jatinder Verma. Discussing his decision to create the Bollywood pantomimes which operate in the realm of the popular as a means to attract Asian audiences, he states that: So the popular it would seem to me for Asians is still a very strong idea, or motor, hence one thinks of Bollywood. And I think it is possible, and this is one of the reasons why I went into pantomime, because it seemed to me that here what is really interesting is that in the form itself you can see the journey from Britain to India and back again. (Verma, 2017) In this way, he engages with the popular forms of both Bollywood and pantomime to create a new transnational dramaturgical and aesthetic form which:

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continues my mission with having a dialogue with the forms of the west as much as the forms of the east. I can use the form of the ingredients, the dramaturgy, which has another kind of effect which is to stretch the actors. (ibid.) This then becomes a ‘Binglishing’ of a Western form of theatre through the process of ‘Bollywoodisation’. The traditional Christmas pantomime is seen as part of a very British tradition, and its use of humour, song and dance, and ironic comment on current issues offers a space that is both entertaining and subversive. Discussing the performance form during the nineteenth century, Caroline Radcliffe indicates that: [p]‌antomime invokes confusion and paradox, emphasising the ambiguous nature of the stage characters in their chaotic, topsy-​turvy world. […] The popular reading of pantomime defines it as a fantastical escape in which harmlessly fun, stock characters act out traditional fairy stories in a good-​ humoured display of slapstick, popular song, romance and spectacle. (Radcliffe, 2010: 118) This spectacle can also operate as a space of subversion, where it has the ability to transgress social norms and gender roles, offering ‘a temporary relaxation of class boundaries [that] would seem to be the very British way of periodically breaking its own social rules in the safe enclosure of theatre’ (ibid.). Jim Davis indicates that, similar to Bollywood, pantomime is a ‘hybrid form’ (Davis, 2010: 2), and also evokes a sense of nostalgia: ‘Pantomime’s place in nostalgia for childhood and in the iconicity of the family firmly took root in the Victorian era’ (op. cit.: 6), and this sense of nostalgia as well as the temporary overturning of social order continues in pantomimes today. Verma uses these conventions, and intertwines them with those from Bollywood to create composite productions that are both Asian and British. There have been three Bollywood pantomimes:  Bollywood Cinderella (2011, written by Hardeep Singh Kohli); Dick Whittington Goes Bollywood (2012, written by Harvey Virdi with song lyrics by Farrokh Dhondy); and Bollywood Jack (2016, written by Farrokh Dhondy), all of which were directed by Verma, and performed at Tara Theatre in Earlsfield, London. In each case, there is a playing on the well-​known stories from traditional British pantomimes, but with Asian characters and themes, and Bollywood and Western music and dance. The plot of Cinderella is transposed to ‘Surinderella [who] is forced to slave night and day making chappals (slippers) for her “Auntiji” and her stepsisters Happy and Lucky. With only her Singing Veggies for company. Little does she know her luck is about to change …’ (Tara Arts website), thus comically transferring the characters and plot elements to those of stock characters and familiar cultural references from an Asian context. As with Kanjoos, Hardeep Singh Kohli was used as a draw for audiences, with his face prominently on all publicity images.The music was directed by Danyal Dhondy, who has worked

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on all the pantomimes, and sung by Sohini Alam who had also worked on Kanjoos, with the actors lip-​syncing to the songs. Dick Whittington Goes Bollywood plays on the idea of the seeming dominance of Punjabi culture in South Asian communities. Dikra, a good Gujarati boy from Bradford, goes to London to find fame and fortune as a chef, promoting Gujarati food rather than the usual Punjabi fare found in restaurants. The production makes ironical statements about contemporary political and social issues. The cat, a feature of the Dick Whittington story, is here Billi, also Gujarati, who has been evicted from 10 Downing Street (referencing Humphrey the cat) because he has cleared out all the rats. Dikra falls in love with Alice, who is the daughter of the evil Sir Rattan Singh Chuaa (a Punjabi), the embodiment of the more-​English-​than-​the-​English posh Indian who wears a Union Jack shirt, red frock coat, one cricket pad and is campaigning to become the Lord Mayor of London. There is also a traditional pantomime dame, cook Makhani Kaun played by Antony Bunsee, and Caroline Kilpatrick is the Fairy Godmother with multiple arms and wings in imitation of a Hindu deity. After much comedic interplay and risqué jokes, including a version of Gangnam Style performed by puppet rats, Dikra marries Alice and becomes Lord Mayor –​a few years before a real Asian Lord Mayor was actually elected with Sadiq Khan in 2016. The Western and Asian composite nature of the production is seen in Sir Rattan’s outfit in Figure 4.5, as well as the images from the publicity in Figure 4.6 which combine British elements of Big Ben with the colours and style of Bollywood posters and the Indian flag. Bollywood Jack makes a deliberate point from the start about the British and Indian influences of the composite production, with Farrokh Dhondy’s script using Kipling’s famous line of ‘East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet’ as a framing device to show that such a meeting can happen in theatrical form. Zak dreams of being a Bollywood film star, and is in love with Zeta, who installs broadband for a living. Zak sells the family cow (who is a sacred Hindu cow and practises yoga) for magic beans that grow into a beanstalk which takes him to the magical land of the giant Hubble-​Bubble. The story follows the familiar one with Indian twists, such as the giant’s wife turning into a sitar rather than a harp, and the making of a video of a Bollywood wedding at the end. There are also familiar elements of traditional British pantomimes. Zak is played as a principal boy by actress Sohm Kapila, pictured in Figure 4.7, who dresses in a ruffled shirt and knee-​length boots with a drawn-​on moustache, suggesting the traditional figure of the principal girl but within an Indian context. There is also a pantomime dame played by Ralph Birtwell as Dame Mrs Moowallah, Zak’s mother, seen in Figure 4.8. ‘She’ appears initially dressed in the traditional dame outfit of an exaggerated size with colourful clothes, wig and make-​ up in the first half, and a glittery sari in the second half. ‘She’ performs in the manner of a traditional dame, speaking directly to the audience, telling jokes and setting the scene. The production contains many topical references and ironic jokes about Brexit, Theresa May and the effects of austerity measures.There are quotations from works

Kordbacher as Sir Rattan in Dick Whittington Goes Bollywood. Source: Richard Walker, courtesy of Tara Arts. FIGURE 4.5  Sam

material for Dick Whittington Goes Bollywood. Source: courtesy of Tara Arts. FIGURE 4.6  Publicity

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Kapila as Zak in Bollywood Jack. Source: Talula Sheppard, courtesy of Tara Arts. FIGURE 4.7  Sohm

of literature, with Dhondy using lines from Shakespeare, Hardy and Tennyson, though these were often lost on the audience due to the speed of delivery and in the midst of the rhyming couplets. There are also local references to Tara’s environs of Earlsfield and surrounding areas, and for some performances, the mayor of Wandsworth was also present and took part in the action, a move which was also seen in Rifco’s production of The Deranged Marriage, discussed in the next chapter, where the local mayor also made a guest appearance at some performances. As well as some original music, well-​known Bollywood songs were performed live in the production, including ‘Jai Ho’ from Slumdog Millionaire which was transformed

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FIGURE 4.8  Ralph

Birtwell as Dame Mrs Moowallah, and Shala Nyx as Moomoo the cow in Bollywood Jack. Source: Talula Sheppard, courtesy of Tara Arts.

into a version of the giant’s ‘Fee-​fi-​fo-​fum’. Zak taught the audiences to perform some basic Bhangra moves which were used in the scenes of him climbing the beanstalk, as well as singing along to the ‘Bean Song’ to the tune of the song ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ from the film Mary Poppins, but with words to reflect the theme of beans:  ‘Canelloni, Flagiolli, Black-​eyed, French and Navy!’ etc. The performance is an entertaining and playful mixture of British pantomime and Bollywood conventions that offers a space of subversion found in traditional pantomime, even though order is firmly restored at the end. It is perhaps ironic that

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Victorian pantomimes were part of the nation-​building process which reinforced imperialist discourse through popular culture (Pritchard and Yeandle, 2016: 161). This idea of a pantomime performing the nation is one that Verma is still trying to do, but the nation now is one of a place of meeting between West and East, or Britain and India, which positions it in the ‘in-​between’ or ‘third space’ of the diaspora, and offers a portrayal of multicultural conviviality that is created through the structure and themes of the productions. In addition to popular entertainment through pantomime, Bollywood has also been seen on stage in large-​scale revue-​type shows, which perform new or reconstructed versions of songs and dances from films as part of a glitzy Bollywood spectacle. There may be a loose narrative storyline, but essentially the focus is on the pleasure of watching the sequences, and enjoying the variety of songs and dance from Indian films on stage in Britain. Shows such as The Merchants of Bollywood, Beyond Bollywood and Taj Express all offer this type of popular entertainment of a transadaptation of Bollywood to the stage. This can be seen in a similar way to the ‘juke-​box musicals’ discussed in Chapter 3, where familiar songs from films are re-​ performed live in a different context. This, to repeat, ‘contributes to the sense of familiarity and nostalgia experienced by audience members, which in turn allows them to be removed from their everyday lives, to relive fantasies and memories, and to participate in singing and dancing’ (Taylor, 2012: 152), and echoes the comment by Philip Auslander on the dominance of media rather than the more ‘alien’ form of theatre. Figure 4.9 shows the front stage curtain from The Merchants of Bollywood which depicts a montage of posters from well-​known films such as Sholay and the NRI-​produced Monsoon Wedding. This evokes the nostalgic re-​memory of the films and songs for the audience before the show has started, to engage them with the experience of fantasy and escape from everyday life, as well as anticipation of the familiar songs to follow.

curtain from The Merchants of Bollywood. Source: Jerri Daboo. FIGURE 4.9  Front

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The BBC attempted to use Bollywood in a large-​scale spectacle on stage and screen with Bollywood Carmen in 2013, a ‘Bollywoodisation’ of the story of Carmen set in Bradford. The production was performed live in Bradford, and transmitted on BBC4 at the same time. It consisted of a mixture of Bollywood songs, ‘Bollywoodised’ versions of Western pop songs, and adaptations of the music of Bizet’s opera to create a composite production transferring the melodrama of the opera to a British South Asian setting. Local members of the community were taught a Bollywood dance in advance, which they performed as a ‘flash mob’ intervention during the show. Bollywood dance is also seen on stage with younger generations of Asians in Britain taking part in competitions and festivals where they re-​enact dance sequences from films. As well as performing in community spaces, this can also move onto mainstream stages. Sadler’s Wells and the Hammersmith Apollo are theatre spaces that host such Bollywood competitions, including the Battle of Bollywood, where Bollywood dance teams from different universities across the UK perform in a competition to become the National Bollywood Champions. Suman Bhuchar, who attended the competition at the Apollo in 2017, explains that some groups were doing a medley of songs by their favourite actors, such as Aishwarya Rai or John Abraham, imitating their style of dance. She notes that this was sponsored by the Asian cable television channels in the UK, and with the growth of such channels, and the Internet and social media, that young South Asians are saturated with the influence of Bollywood in their lives, and are using this as a playful means of identification and enjoyment, as well as developing new skills. For Bhuchar, they are ‘learning a craft that has been informed by cinema’ (Bhuchar, 2017). This is producing a space of visibility and expression to younger South Asians in Britain through performing Bollywood. This multivalent use of Bollywood for younger generations is therefore creating a composite identity of both Asian and British, through a form of popular culture that is accessible and fun, and yet also homogenises and reduces the experiences of the communities to one cultural form. All the forms of transadaptation discussed in this chapter show a multivalent dimension to the use of Bollywood on stage. Many of the theatre companies and practitioners discussed are from the second generation of the original migrants from the 1960s, and are creating narratives based on their own experiences that are situated within the racialised four markers of identity. The move towards the popular is conforming to those representations, and also responding to theatre and funding institutional concerns for offering ‘safe’ productions that will not offend communities. As Verma himself acknowledges, the stereotypes: haven’t changed that much in 40  years. […] That is a problem that Asians particularly face. There’s a whole range of stories and talent that’s around, but we’ve cast ourselves almost –​and that’s the interesting thing –​within a populist idiom: Goodness Gracious Me and so forth. (Verma, 2017)

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For Janet Steele, these productions can limit the stories and voices of British South Asians in theatre: Larger companies and venues are producing plays by and with South Asian artists, but too many of them are what I call ‘tourist’ Indian. There is merit in this sort of theatre –​it serves up Indian culture in the shiniest, most entertaining way possible. But sparkly saris and arranged-​marriage melodrama do little to present the broader range of stories out there, and the more nuanced aspects of a writer’s perspective. (Steele, 2012) However, the productions also offer a visibility to South Asian writers, directors, actors and designers that is an intervention into the dominant whiteness of mainstream theatre, and an opportunity to expand their careers due to this exposure. Despite the concerns of the popularity of Bollywood in theatre productions expressed by Bancil and Steele, these productions do attract South Asian audiences who otherwise may not come to the theatre. The contradictions inherent in this use of the ‘popular’ may in some ways be placed within the ‘culture clash’ and ‘inter-​generational conflict’ markers of the second generation. As suggested in this chapter, and discussed further in the Conclusion to the book, subsequent and newer generations of younger South Asians in Britain are exploring other ways to express their sense of identity in theatre. This chapter has looked at a range of different approaches to transadaptation, and the incorporation of Bollywood into theatre productions in various ways. The beginning of the chapter suggested that the term ‘transadaptation’ would be useful for this study as it offers the broader connotations of translation of language and culture, as well as transferring of form and media. The productions have offered a means to consider ‘transadaptation’ as a critical term. While it certainly does encompass many of the processes involved, such as the translation of language, media and genre, there is also a concern about the term in the light of the argument in this book as a whole. Originating in translation studies, there is a potential for ‘transadaptation’ to be seen as a form of translation in that one language is translated into another. This could be related to the idea of one essentialised theatrical or cultural form that is adapted into another, which is antithetical to my suggestion in Chapter 2 that there needs to be a shift from thinking about essentialised forms that are brought together to create a ‘fusion’ or ‘hybrid’, and instead consider that the process rather results in a composite performance that draws on many elements which themselves are not essentialised. The concern is that if a model based in translation is applied to performance, it could result in a similar discourse to Patrice Pavis’s ‘Hourglass Model’ of intercultural theatre, which ‘focuses on “the intercultural transfer between source and target culture” as a way of depicting the relativity of the notion of culture and the complicated relationship between partners in the exchange’ (Lo and Gilbert, 2002: 41). This implies a ‘pure’ or ‘essentialised’ source culture which is translated into or transformed by a similarly essentialised target

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culture. Lo and Gilbert suggest that ‘the model assumes a one-​way cultural flow based on a hierarchy of privilege’ (op. cit.:  43), and restricts analysis of a wider range of adaptation processes. It also articulates an imperialist mindset, reflected in ‘intercultural’ theatre performances by some Western theatre-​makers adapting, or appropriating, forms from other cultures in their work.2 While acknowledging this concern with the term, I feel that ‘transadaptation’ offers a useful way to consider the productions as it implies multiple processes and, in particular, the word ‘transnational’ which moves it from a binary of source and target culture into a more fluid process that can draw on multiple forms in diverse ways. It would certainly be helpful to place this alongside the idea of ‘composite’ or ‘composition’ to suggest a process of making that is not just about translation, however, language is an important part in the productions discussed, and so the idea of translation is also significant. Therefore, ‘transadaptation’ is helpful as a critical lens to consider the adaptation of European texts in an Indian context, as well as practices and aesthetics from India in a British context, and the mixing of the forms of Bollywood and pantomime, all of which involve translation, transferring of media and transnational movement. Perhaps what this discussion indicates above all is the need to move from the idea of ‘intercultural’ theatre which still has imperialist connotations of appropriation and hierarchy, as Lo and Gilbert suggest, and instead acknowledge how the productions articulate a diasporic process that draws on forms, languages and media in different ways to create new forms of expression and performance in the transnational space of the ‘home’ of the diaspora.

Notes 1 The title refers to the name of the club in the play. The word ‘Wah’, pronounced ‘Vah’, is the sound of appreciation made by the audiences watching the dance. 2 See Rustom Bharucha’s (1993) well-​known criticism of such practices, particularly in the work of Peter Brook, as an example.

5 BENDING BHANGRA Rifco Arts and Bend It Like Beckham: the musical

Integration, British Asian, This is the sound of a new generation. Rule Britannia, rule Bhangra, Coming together as one. (Lyrics from the song ‘Britain’s Got Bhangra’ from the stage production of the same name by Rifco Arts) This final chapter focuses on two productions by Rifco Arts, and Bend It Like Beckham: the musical, which are situated in the Punjabi communities in Britain, and use Bhangra music and dance in a variety of ways as a marker of identity of British Asian-​ness, as well as ethnic and religious sensibility and aesthetics. The shift to Bhangra does not remove Bollywood from the discussion; as stated in Chapter 1, a strong connection has developed between the two forms to the extent that there is a clear influence on the contemporary performance of both. The productions discussed contain both Bollywood and Bhangra, especially in the work of Rifco with artistic director Pravesh Kumar having a particular affinity for Bollywood, which is seen in the shows. However, the use of Bhangra moves the focus to be firmly that of Britain, and British Asian identities, with all of the productions being set in Britain and interrogating diasporic identity through the themes, plot, aesthetic and use of music and dance. The discussion of British Bhangra in Chapter 1 indicated how this developed in Britain from the late 1970s, and was particularly created by second-​generation Punjabi youth who were seeking a new form of cultural expression that drew on the traditions of their parents and the ‘homeland’ of the subcontinent, along with new approaches to instrumentation, lyrics and rhythms that were in keeping with the ‘home’ of diasporic Britain, and drawing on elements of African-​Caribbean music and culture as part of a transnational construction of the performance form. As well as

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the transnational flow, it is also located in the space of the local, and both defines and is defined by this sense of the local, as well as the connection to wider transnational flows. Examining Bhangra in the productions as a British construction allows for investigation of representation in the local space of Britain, and British identity. In two of the productions, Britain’s Got Bhangra and Bend It Like Beckham: the musical, the local is reduced further to being set in the diasporic town of Southall. There may still be reference to the ‘homeland’ of the Indian subcontinent, including Bollywood films, but the productions are essentially British South Asian stories. In contrast to some of the productions in the previous chapters that were set in India, the setting of the productions in this chapter allows for a focus on the UK as the central space of the local which forms and constructs identities, and Bhangra becomes a representation of this construction. Bhangra is itself in a third space as a transadaptation of a musical form, and thus embodies both tradition and modernity in its performance, as well as a re-​memory of the ‘homeland’ transformed through the musical filtering and culture of ‘home’. In this way, as Dudrah states, through Bhangra ‘we see and hear what it means to be British and Asian’ (Dudrah, 2012: 70), thus becoming an embodiment of the diasporic space. In this way, Bhangra became ‘the’ representation of South Asian urban youth. This places it within the four markers of identity. As discussed in Chapter 2, the growth of inner-​city areas and urban youth culture was seen partly as a result of post-​Second World War migration to the UK, reinforcing the markers of culture clash and inter-​generational conflict where the youth, to repeat Avtar Brah, were perceived as being ‘disoriented, confused and atomised individuals’ (Brah, 2006: 53). As Bhangra developed and was mixed with forms such as rap, reggae and hip hop, the emphasis on urban youth became stronger. However, while this could be seen as an imposed racialised discourse, Bhangra was also used as a way for Asian youth to have a form of cultural identification for themselves. This extended beyond the Punjabi communities and into other South Asian groups, despite originating in Punjabi culture and language, and Bhangra resulted in complex intersectional identifications as young Bengalis and Gujaratis also related to it as part of the identity of being Asian in Britain: ‘In contemporary Britain, the multiple use of languages, whether Bengali, Urdu or Gujarati, does not act as a barrier to a sense of solidarity in identifying with displaced South Asian-​derived musical cultures’ (Kaur and Kalra, 1996: 220). Hyder suggests that the focus on South Asian youth establishes the music as being ‘other’ to Western forms, which can likewise serve to keep the communities as ‘other’: The stereotype of a closed and unitary Asian community renders Asian youth incompatible with contemporary youth cultures; bhangra is therefore portrayed primarily as an Asian (therefore peripheral) cultural phenomenon and also a transgressive medium for Asian youth. This perpetuates two notions: that bhangra is specifically Asian (not for ‘us’ Westerners); and the separateness and incompatibility of Asians with Western cultural practices, as

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represented by narratives of culture clash and intergenerational strife –​clandestine clubbers being a case in point. (Hyder, 2004: 71) For Leante, however, Bhangra is not isolationist, but by its nature is a mixing of traditional Indian and mainstream Western sounds, thus symbolising the desire of young Asians to be part of the mainstream, while having a distinctive voice. She suggests that British Bhangra embodies an ‘ambiguity’ due to being formed of elements that may be ‘familiar’ or ‘alien’ based on the experience of the listener: In British bhangra this ambiguity emerges from the deliberate adoption of Western features (such as instruments, forms, riffs and so on) –​‘other’ compared to the original rural dance but ‘familiar’ to the young generations in the new context of the diasporic community in Britain. Thus, bhangra comes to mirror the complex soundscapes and cultural reality that young British-​born Indians live immersed in. (Leante, 2004: 114) This ambiguity is not necessarily a ‘clash’ or ‘conflict’, or a desire to be isolationist, but rather an expression of a cultural and sonic landscape that embodies the composite identities of being both Asian and British. The other feature of ‘modern’ Bhangra, as discussed in Chapter 1, is the transnational formation and transformation to include elements of other musical forms, particularly those from the US and African-​Caribbean communities.This created a new form of identification and representation for younger British South Asians that widened the sensibility of Asian-​ness to incorporate sounds from other cultures and communities. For radio DJ Nihal Arthanayake, who is of Sri Lankan origin: It goes back to being an Asian kid in a largely non-​Asian school. I didn’t feel I belonged to any one group, I was looking to find that group and it was through hip hop and rap culture that I found it. It gave me a sense of belonging somewhere here. Suddenly, hip hop made having pigment fashionable. Suddenly, the icons that kids were dancing to all had brown skin, they were African Americans and they were very cool. It helped me to feel proud of who I  was. There are all kinds of cultural hooks speeding past you as you grow up, and you grab on and hang on to whatever you are drawn to when you are looking to find something that gives you a sense of your own identity and where you fit in in the world. (in Akbar, 2008) As well as the music itself, the artists performing British Bhangra were also seen as the ‘voice’ and representation of the young South Asians, recalling the idea of the ‘burden of representation’ noted in Chapter 1:

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Whether they liked it or not the pioneering Asian bands have been forced into a spotlight where they have been analysed and identified as the representatives of a youthful Asian constituency. This mode of representation put extra pressure on the musicians since attention is focused not just on their musical output but also on their supposed role as representatives of a ‘community’. (Hyder, 2004: 114) Hyder cites Tajinder Singh, lead singer of the band Cornershop which produced the song ‘Brimful of Asha’ that became a hit in mainstream Western charts in part due to the remixed version by Fatboy Slim, acknowledging the problem of the burden of representation: ‘The thing is … we’re just talking about an individual and how they live … how can they have any responsibility to a wider community when all they’re talking about is themselves?’ (in op. cit.: 115). The theatre productions discussed in this chapter also become a form of representation of the communities, most particularly the Punjabi communities, and Bhangra is a means of reinforcing this representation. There are complex issues of the ways that Bhangra has come to represent both ethnic and religious identities for the current generation of young Sikhs, which is not within the scope of this study, as the form of music within the productions is generally that of the earlier ‘youth’ of the second generation from the 1980s and 1990s.The portrayal of Punjabi communities in the productions tends to show them as being full of fun and cracking jokes, but also displaying melancholy and nostalgia, which conforms more to the residual representations from shows such as Goodness Gracious Me, and does not necessarily tackle some of the social issues affecting young British Punjabis today. This representation of Punjabi communities also raises the question of religion. While the majority of Punjabis are Sikhs, there are also Hindus and Muslims, and this reflects the complex and contested history of the region of the Punjab, now divided into two nations. Sikhism is the dominant representation in popular culture forms, but Rifco’s production of The Deranged Marriage plays on the mixings of religions within Punjabi communities in the form of the wedding, which is essentially Hindu, while also drawing on elements from other religions. Chaman asks his father, Bali, what religion they are, to which Bali replies: Bali: You don’t know!? You should be ashamed. Well your grandfather on my side was a Sikh and we went to the Gurudwara, and your grandfather on your mother’s side was a Hindu and they went to the Temple, but my mother prayed to a great Fakir Baba, and she went to a mosque, while your mother’s mother, well she thought she was god herself, and she went to a nutter’s home. So take your pick! Chaman:  And to make it easier, mum sent me to a Catholic School! Bali: You can’t say we didn’t give you choices. (Kumar, 2005: 41)

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This makes a joke of the mixings of religions, and highlights that Chaman, as the younger generation, is not aware of nor engaged with his heritage, reinforced when he has to put on a turban, and says, ‘I’ve forgotten how to tie this’ (op. cit.: 43). However, Britain’s Got Bhangra and particularly Bend It Like Beckham:  the musical firmly situate the Punjabi characters as being Sikh, though offer a particular portrayal of this. The best-​known outward marker of identity of a Sikh is the wearing of the turban and growing the beard. Some of the first generation of migrant Sikhs encountered racism and problems with employment due to the visible sign of the turban, and chose to remove it and cut their hair to be accepted within a British society that was very alienating. This has now changed to a great extent, and many elders from that generation and more recent elder migrants from the subcontinent are now wearing turbans. This has also become more popular amongst some younger Sikh men and women in Britain who are also wearing the turban, some of whom have taken the five Khalsas, having undergone the Amrit Ceremony to be initiated into the Khalsa order. Jasjit Singh has studied religious practice amongst young Sikhs in Britain, and notes that while some men and women are freely undertaking the Khalsas and wearing turbans and not shaving, others are still reluctant to do so in case they are seen as being careless about their appearance, making them unable to get a job or being viewed as a ‘militant’ or religious fundamentalist (Singh, J., 2010: 208). The theatre productions generally show younger Sikh men as not wearing the turban and having their hair short, while elders are generally seen with turbans and beards; there are no portrayals of women wearing turbans. This creates an inter-​ generational distinction, with the older generation seen as more traditional and religious, and the younger as modern and secular. However, there is a strong sense of the religious in the productions, particularly in Bend It Like Beckham: the musical where the figure of Guru Nanak looms large over the set of the house, and the Sikh religious chant of Satnam Shri Waheguru is sung several times in the show. Jess is torn not just between her family and football, but also between Guru Nanak and David Beckham, with pictures of them both within the house showing her inner contestation. However, the portrayal of religion is kept to one that fits in with the reinforcing of traditional family values. In many ways, this is a residual of the emphasis on the return to conservative values of home, family and religious duty that were discussed in Chapter 3 as part of the ‘New India’. Thus the modern retains a strong sense of the traditional, and this is very much part of the discourse in all the productions. The position of women is also an important part of the portrayal of a composite intersectional identity of being British, Asian, Punjabi and female. Kaur and Kalra suggest that women ‘continue to be represented with reference to their conceptualized place of origin  –​that is, symbolic of Punjabi-​ness or Indian-​ness  –​as chief bearers of culture or representative of Oriental exoticism’ (Kaur and Kalra, 1996:  220–​221). Women are still the embodiment of the morality of the nation and the family, as has been seen in previous chapters. There may be opportunities for them to be seen as ‘modern’ but this is often covert and kept hidden from the

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family, whether with Jess playing football or Sona drinking secretly in her bedroom before her wedding. When this is discovered there is initial conflict, but there is a final resolution that keeps the families happy, even though Jess leaves to go to the United States, and Sona does not go through with the marriage. The use of the range of wedding ceremonies to add spectacle and nostalgic re-​memory also allows for a particular space of subversion for women, which is in the sangeet ceremony. This takes place before the wedding and is traditionally a women-​only event, where elder women teach the bride about how to be a ‘good wife’. It also creates a space of subversion where the women can mock men, often through the use of Giddha songs and dance. Sometimes a woman will dress up as a man, with another woman performing ‘his’ wife, and they will playfully re-​enact comic scenes. In contemporary Britain, this ceremony is often also attended by men for some of the evening, and in Bend It Like Beckham: the musical, the all-​female space is broken by some of the male characters dressed as women intervening and stopping the ceremony, thus silencing the ‘voice’ of the all-​female space. As with the turban, the use of clothing also becomes a marker for different generations of women, with elder Asian female characters tending to wear saris and shalwar kameez, and younger ones wearing Western clothes unless they are attending a religious ceremony or formal event. For Jess, this also becomes a clash between wearing her football kit and boots, and her sari and high heels. The more conservative approach to portraying Punjabi family life is also seen in the way that Bhangra itself is used. In Britain’s Got Bhangra, essentially telling the story of the development of British Bhangra, the character of Twinkle becomes disconnected from his roots by changing from singing ‘traditional’ Bhangra to a Westernised form, also becoming a drunk as the modern Western lifestyle takes him over. His friend Rocky Singh says to him, ‘Remember where we started from, be true to the music’, indicating the need both to return to a simpler, more ‘traditional’ form of singing, but also a ‘purer’ lifestyle that was closer to the one he had left behind in India. In Bend It Like Beckham: the musical when Jess’s friend Tony tells her he is gay, they sing together about how they can ‘bend’ the rules without breaking them in order to do what they want, and still not upset the family, in the song ‘Bend It’: So keep a check on what you say, and be prepared to meet halfway, And if it’s deftly done, then everyone stays friends, When everything, everyone bends. Which means it’s not a question of hiding, It’s how the facts are expressed. So really what we’re deciding is what’s best for everyone. (Hart, 2015: 68–​69) This is referencing the title of the film and stage musical where ‘bend it’ refers to both the way that Beckham kicks and bends the ball, but also how to bend the rules of traditional family life in such a way as to keep everyone happy. This again fits

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in more with the narrative of HAHK and the subsequent stage version of Fourteen Songs where the younger generation are allowed to be modern, as long as they also conform to traditional family and religious values. As stated in Chapter 1, the film of Bend It Like Beckham was released in 2002, and has stronger echoes of this conservative view from the 1990s rather than of London in 2015. Bhangra music and dance are also bending in being adapted into the British context. The musical shows Bhangra song and dance as a composite form mixed with hip hop and street dance, and the song ‘Bend It’ has a bossa nova rhythm, recalling the use of this rhythm in Bollywood films as well. The ‘bending’ of identities, cultures and characters in the productions means that they stay within the markers of identity of the ‘traditional’ representation of British South Asian communities, while also allowing for moments of subversion and intervention that never break the conventions and rules, but certainly challenge them.

Rifco Arts Rifco has played an important part in the development of popular theatre aimed at British South Asian audiences, depicting life in contemporary Britain and using Bollywood and Bhangra music and dance. Despite their importance, their work has received little attention in academia other than Graham Ley’s chapter in Ley and Dadswell (2011). This section offers a contextualisation of the company and artistic director Pravesh Kumar to demonstrate how the company style and ethos were established, as well as the close connections with previous South Asian productions and artists, some of whom have been discussed in this book, showing the influence that the community of South Asian theatre practitioners has had on each other. One of Rifco’s hallmarks is the clarity of their target audience: South Asian families who might not normally go to the theatre, and the use of popular entertainment in the form of the theatre productions to draw them into mainstream venues. In this way, their productions are targeted at creating popular works for audiences that offer entertainment and a space of visibility which Pravesh Kumar believes will provide theatre for communities that are otherwise not represented or catered for on mainstream stages. The company’s mission statement, as articulated in their 2012–​2015 NPO Arts Council England funding agreement, is to ‘continue to develop and produce new plays which reflect the British Asian experience, fusing popular multi-​ cultural forms with traditional theatre’ (Rifco archives, a). Their website states that the company ‘develops and creates vibrant, accessible and high quality theatre which reflects and celebrates the contemporary British Asian experience’ (Rifco website). The key points in these statements are that the work made by the company consists of new and original productions, using popular performance forms to entertain the audience, which both ‘reflects and celebrates’ British Asian experience and identity. This use of popular forms also aims to educate the audience through the use of entertainment:

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We entice, educate and engage with people of all backgrounds to celebrate the cultural fusions and rich diversity of our society. Our success lies in knowing what our audience wants.We constantly strive to produce great and watchable art that educates without preaching.We want our audience to deal with current topics and at times taboo subjects whilst being able to laugh at the world we live in. This combined with all the glitz and glamour you would expect from a British Asian Theatre Company makes Rifco unique! (Rifco website) The desire to educate and address ‘taboo subjects’ in an entertaining way has become part of the inherent thematic and aesthetic structure of their productions. This is partly connected to the very precise nature of the audience that Pravesh Kumar wants to attract which, as stated, is British Asian families who are not as familiar with going to the theatre, and in particular, not from the sort of middle-​or upper-​class elite audience he perceives as being the regular theatre-​goers: I’m talking about a grassroots community here. I’m not talking about the middle-​class communities that will go and see all sorts of theatre. I’m talking about the communities that will not go to the theatre, that might go and see a Bollywood movie. And I know them. And I want them to come in. (Kumar, 2008) Kumar’s desire for this audience partly came out of his own experience of going to the theatre when he was young, and realising there were no Asian faces amongst the spectators. His belief is that this audience, who may not be as familiar with theatre-​ going, would be attracted to productions which offer entertainment related to the familiarity and pleasure of the spectacle and escapism of Bollywood and Bhangra, and the use of humour as well as song and dance numbers. This is partly based in his own experience and love of Bollywood films and Bhangra music, as will be discussed later, but this aesthetic becomes the way in which Kumar feels that his audience will respond to the issues in the productions. Far from feeling the ‘burden’ of representation, it can appear that Rifco actively embraces this, and becomes the means and mouthpiece for presenting both the kind of theatre that Kumar believes British Asians want to see, as well as the issues that affect their lives and the ways that they deal with them.

Company background1 Pravesh Kumar grew up in Slough, a town to the west of London that has a substantial South Asian diaspora community. Geographically situated near to other diasporic concentrations in towns including Southall and Hayes, as well as being close to Heathrow airport which offers employment to the communities, and also near Windsor and Eton, with their identification with white royalist elite, Slough

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has been a place of migration for economic purposes, and perceived as a successful and prosperous example of multiculturalism in Britain: Kumar describes the town as being ‘a multicultural nugget’ (Kumar, 2010). Growing up and going to school in Slough meant he was immersed in a culture that was both Asian and British. This was reflected in his love of both Bollywood films and theatre which formed the basis of his work initially as an actor, then as a director and writer. He recalls going to the theatre when he was young: I think it’s one of my earliest memories of going to the theatre, there’s no-​one else who’s Asian sitting in this auditorium –​not one person. And if I think about it, that’s what I do now. My job … I’ve gone into theatre to actually fill it with people who wouldn’t normally go. (Kumar, 2008) This fascination with both film and theatre led him to study drama at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts (ALRA) as the course offered the opportunity to train in both. However, he felt that the approach to drama at the time was stripping him of his Indian identity, and instead was training him to become a homogenised type of actor, speaking in received pronunciation, and so he felt that he ‘didn’t fit into the drama school model’ (ibid.). Despite this, he found himself inundated with agents after the final showcase in ALRA, ‘not because I was very good, it was because I was Asian’ (Kumar, 2008). From this, he got his first professional job working with South Asian theatre company motiroti on their production of Moti Roti, Putti Chunni in 1993. Working on this play introduced him to some figures who would play an important part in his future development of Rifco, including Nina Wadia and Keith Khan. He subsequently travelled to India to try to satisfy his love of film, which began the transnational flow of influence and experience of the film and television industry of India in his work. He: was able to make contacts and become acquainted with the industry and its methods in a number of visits during the 1990s, and received a break when he came forward to be an executive producer in 1990 for a television project, Mr Grishna Gant Here? (Is Mr Grishna Gant Home?). (Ley, 2011a: 216) which was a spoof Indian horror film.This initial hands-​on experience of film work was to continue to feed into his theatre work, and the contacts that he made in India proved to be vital in the formation of Rifco. In addition to film, Kumar also went to see theatre in Mumbai, but felt that the work happening in mainstream venues was very ‘middle class’, often doing adaptations of classics, and ‘trying to be very English with it’ (Kumar, 2008). Instead, he turned to theatre happening in the suburbs, particularly Marathi theatre, which to

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him is the ‘real’ Indian theatre rather than the work happening in the centre of the city. Marathi theatre, with origins in folk forms and Sangeet Natak (music-​drama, as discussed in Chapter 1), has had a long development and a multiplicity of forms but, according to Adrija Bose, rather than catering to the upper-​class audiences in central Mumbai, ‘Marathi theatre is all about the masses mainly because of the way it gets people to relate to the script’ in addition to the types of genres found in the plays, including ‘[c]‌omedy, serious depiction of the society, political satires, musicals’ (Bose, 2012). This focus on popular theatre, aimed at a mass rather than an upper-​class audience, using comedy, satire, current issues and music and dance, was also to be a foundation in the work of Rifco, showing another transnational movement of influence from the ‘homeland’ of India adapted to the ‘home’ of the diaspora. When he returned to England, Kumar took part in a number of theatre projects including Parminder Sekhon’s Not Just An Asian Babe, discussed in Chapter 4, and other work at the Watermans arts centre. He was ‘immensely impressed by [Hardial] Rai’s success with British Asian audiences’ (Ley, 2011a: 217) at the Watermans, particularly with the use of the comedy-​sketch revue format that was highly popular, and took part in these shows including one entitled Arrange That Marriage, with Gurpreet Bhatti and Ajay Chhabra in 1998, both of whom went on to be part of Rifco’s first production (ibid.). Another key performance in which he was the lead actor was Tamasha’s Fourteen Songs, as was discussed in Chapter 3. The Bollywood-​ style song and dance nature of the production suited him: I’m Mr Bollywood really. I’ve worked in that industry, I know the genre so well and just fitted in really well. […] [Doing Fourteen Songs] linked me to Bollywood quite well because it was a Bollywood musical. And through that I met Rajshri Productions who made the film that Fourteen Songs was based on. And they showed a great interest in me as an actor. (Kumar, 2008) All these influences from India, both in film and his visits to local forms of theatre, and then theatre in Britain, with the comedy sketches in Watermans and the Bollywood-​style musical of Tamasha, played an important part in the forming of Kumar’s preferred style and content of productions, and informed the nature of the first piece that led to the creation of Rifco as a company.This piece developed out of a two-​week workshop in Leicester following an invitation from Sita Ramamurthy ‘to explore comic ideas’ (Ley, 2011a: 217). Kumar worked with Ajay Chhabra and Gurpreet Bhatti, as well as actress Harvey Virdi who would subsequently write and perform in many of Rifco’s productions. The four explored comic situations and characters, and during one rehearsal when Kumar and Chhabra were playing two baggage handlers at the airport, they playfully put some shawls on their heads and pretended to be old women, and Bhatti and Virdi responded by playing men. This led to the show Airport, about two baggage handlers falling in love with two

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dinner ladies.The actors devised and wrote the show between them, which was full of broad humour, both verbal and physical, much of this coming from the gender swap. For Kumar, this use of humour was fundamental, not just because the actors, particularly Chhabra, could work with comedy, but also because he felt this was an expression of British Asian identity: It was very British-​Asian humour. It was very broad as well. […] Yes, it was very funny, but it was also very poignant. […] And that was something quite new in British-​Asian comedy. […] We all thought that comedy would be relevant and accessible to that audience. But what happened was it wasn’t just comedy. There was a lot of poignancy, there was a lot of artistic expression, things that we wanted to say, make comments on things. (Kumar, 2008) These elements became a feature of Rifco’s productions, with the focus on humour used to entertain as well as to address issues, allowing the audience to explore these issues in an accessible way. For Kumar, this was different to the type of humour used in the shows at the Watermans due to the added poignancy, and one that he felt was very specifically ‘British Asian’. The production was shown initially at the Leicester Haymarket (now The Curve) in March 1999 for three weeks, and then due to Kumar’s contact with John Fawcett at the Riverside Studios, was performed there for two weeks in April 1999. This was followed by the beginnings of a relationship with Theatre Royal Stratford East, particularly through the important work in promoting diversity in theatre by Philip Hedley, who invited them to perform at the Greenwich Theatre in February 2000. Kumar decided to name the company ‘Rifco’, an acronym for ‘The Reduced Indian Film Company’. This was a tongue-​ in-​cheek reference to the Reduced Shakespeare Company, which was popular at the time, because ‘there are four actors playing everything’ (Kumar, 2008), and also emphasised the focus on film as well as theatre. The next production made by Rifco in 2000 was Bollywood 2000, which was revised in 2003 as Bollywood:  Yet Another Love Story. The production embodies Kumar’s love of Bollywood films, reworked into a British South Asian context using humour and parody to counterbalance the spectacle and escapism of the originals. One of the reasons that the second show following Airport was based in Bollywood was that Kumar was offered financial support from Sony ET in India. This was due to one of the contacts that he had made while working in India being the CEO of Sony, who was planning on bringing the company to Britain in 2000, and wanted to show support for a production based on Bollywood films made by and for the British Asian community, which would also be a means of promoting Sony to that audience. The GBP 15,000 received from Sony was supplemented by a small Script Development grant from the Arts Council. This began a pattern for Kumar of partnering public funding with that of commercial sponsorship related to British Asian consumers.The focus on Bollywood that Sony wanted was certainly one that suited Kumar, and he decided to make a show based

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on not just the films, but also the industry around them, to make a point about the nature of the films to the diaspora: This was an absolute spoof of the last three decades of Bollywood cinema all put together, with all the bigger stories. But commenting on the genre, and on the fact that often in the film the mother looks younger than the hero. And all those kind of things that you sit there going, ‘But she’s too young to be his mother. What’s going on?’ So I started to comment on all those things. And it was a huge, huge success. (Kumar, 2008) There is a very clear reference to Kumar’s love and knowledge of films in the script, seen in the clichés of characters and themes, the performance of well-​known film songs integrated into the action and the use of multimedia in the production with a projected film inserted at various moments. The script itself shows the influence of film in his writing, with a large number of short scenes, reading more like a film script or storyboard than one for theatre which develops character and dramatic narrative. The ‘plot’ is a stringing-​together of stereotypes of exaggerated stories and character types found in the masala genre of Bollywood films. Kumar acknowledges that the script is really a series of sketches, closer to his work on Airport and at the Watermans, rather than a coherent dramatic play. In the programme for the 2000 production, he states that the play is intended to be ‘an affectionate look at the much celebrated genre, and never a spoof ’ (Rifco archives, b); something that he wants the audience to laugh with and not at. He also suggests that this type of production is a metaphor for contemporary British experience, as it: encapsulates and reflects the current of social fusion, which drives the diversity of UK’s and Bollywood’s cultural scene. Bollywood is emerging as a buzzword for the millennium and its engaging charm and stylization will enrapture audiences throughout the UK and Indian subcontinent. (Rifco archives, d) This implies that the performance is a product of the modern, and also a reflection and embodiment of a successful and integrated multicultural Britain, as well as of the transnational flow between the UK and India. ‘Bollywood’ is seen as analogous to the new millennium, a signifier of cultural fusion and part of the Asian Kool discussed in Chapter 3. It is also context-​specific to this new millennium world of the diaspora, as it is ‘a celebration of the genre viewed from a British Asian perspective’ (ibid.), so produced by and for the ‘third space’ of the diaspora, looking back to the ‘homeland’ of India and transforming the genre into something new through the eyes of the second generation. This can make India into the space of the ‘other’, which is reinforced in the programme for both productions which contain an article by Indian film-​maker Apurva Asrani who also directed the film used in the show, entitled ‘Why Bollywood?’. While on one hand valorising the films and their

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global reach, he also situates India as a backward country that needs films in order to escape from the reality of this existence: What we sell via this celluloid medium are simply dreams. For a country that is shaking off its third world status, where food is scarce, and rooves are crumbling. In a nation where education is a privilege and families a burden, for a people that have enough drama and tears in their little lives, to them we sell dreams. We offer … escapism. We endeavour to put smiles onto those dry wrinkled-​with-​worry faces that religiously invest approximately Rs 35 (50p every week) in our films. We understand that they’ve sacrificed at least one square meal, maybe two, to buy air-​conditioned comfort and escape the scorching heat. And in return all they expect are a few smiles, some excitement, and a trouble-​free world for a good three hours. We owe them. (Rifco Archives, c) This both romanticises the ‘poor struggling Indian’ and places contemporary India in a frame of third-​world backwardness, in contrast to the narrative of increasing modernity and prosperity of ‘New India’ that many of the films from the 1990s embrace, as discussed in Chapters 1 and 3. It also places the poverty and backwardness of India in opposition to the successful, integrated and advanced world of the diaspora in the UK.This is a nostalgic looking-​back to the ‘homeland’, while keeping it in its place as somewhere that has been escaped from. The migrant dream is maintaining the place of origin in a state of backwardness in order to reinforce the rightness of the move away to the new place of ‘home’, as was seen in Bombay Dreams. Another key aspect that was established during the production was the development of a marketing strategy which Kumar has used since. This took the form of community engagement work prior to productions in the places the play was touring to, and in diasporic towns such as Southall. Another particular feature has been Kumar and other members of the company team speaking with audience members after the show to get their responses and this, coupled with the research for shows with communities to find out what themes are relevant for them, means that Kumar feels Rifco ‘speaks to the audience […] so they feel part of the journey’ (Kumar, 2013). The company also introduced a ticketing strategy especially aimed at South Asian families, who he felt were not typical theatre-​goers, and so needed to find a way to attract them to the venues.This included doing shows on a Sunday afternoon, so that families could attend, and offering family tickets in groups of five. These changes are ones that he has to fight for at venues that may have other policies, but proved successful, with nearly 90 per cent full houses at performances, and a 90 per cent majority Asian audience at the weekend (Kumar, 2008). The other aspect he noted was the reason behind the success was related to families wanting to watch something together and be entertained, which affected the content and style of Rifco’s productions:

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This was comedy, revue, entertainment. […] This is when I started to realise more so that the audiences wanted to be entertained. Because we used to do Sunday shows, packed, because people could come up with their families. And if you are from the Asian community, one thing that’s really important to Asian families is that when you go out you’re not going to be embarrassed with each other. Dad’s not going to feel, oh my god, they’re kissing, or they’re being too political. Family audiences don’t want to be challenged in that way. They want to be entertained. And I knew that. And that’s kind of the start of Rifco’s policy, I suppose, to entice that audience. […] Because that’s our essential audience, we want to bring them in. (Kumar, 2010) This is the basis of Rifco’s statement on ‘giving the audience what they want’ and that it is all about needs of the audience. This focus on entertainment, and not threatening the audience through showing confronting themes, but still addressing relevant issues to make them reflect on the experience of being Asian in Britain, is seen in all their subsequent productions.

The Deranged Marriage The decision to make a play about the racialised marker of identity for British South Asians of the arranged marriage was initially one that Kumar wanted to avoid, as it is so prevalent in other productions about South Asians. However, his engagement work with younger South Asians in schools and youth centres made him believe that the issue was very relevant for them: But it wasn’t going away. It was such a huge umbrella term in the British Asian community. It just wasn’t disappearing. Everywhere I went I was confronted with all sorts of issues that related to this umbrella term, what we call ‘arranged marriage’. So I came up with a story. (in Ley, 2011a: 221) This story eventually became The Deranged Marriage, which was initially staged in 2004, then again in 2005 and 2006, before being remounted for its tenth anniversary in 2015. In the programme note for the 2004 version, Kumar explains why this subject is important: Great, another show about arranged marriages! […] Weddings are so important in our culture that it’s difficult to ignore them and why should we, they still happen! […] Is this obsession with marriage healthy and what if a career is more important? In most of South Asia the arranged marriage system lives on, but we are in Britain. Is keeping hold of our culture and tradition at any expense realistic when we live in a different place and time? (Rifco archives, e)

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This indicates that Kumar wants to offer a British Asian rather than Indian view of the arranged marriage, acknowledging that some traditions need to change to be appropriate for the ‘home’ of the diaspora. The idea of the play as a ‘wedding show’ became the dramaturgical and stylistic basis of the performance. The staging deliberately attempted to suggest to audiences that they were guests at an actual wedding: they were given orange juice and sweets, the character of the wedding planner spoke directly to them and they took photographs. This broke the usual convention of the fourth wall and made the audiences feel that they were in a space that they were more familiar with than a theatre, and Kumar states that audience members began coming to see the show dressed in their best outfits as if they were attending a real wedding (Ley, 2011a:  222). For Ley, this made the auditorium into an inclusive place ‘which makes the theatre into a shared space of community self-​recognition and enhances the sense of shared time and experience with the characters in the progressive steps and stages of a wedding’ (ibid.). The structure of the wedding ceremonies was used as the structure for the plot and scenes, from the ‘Ladies’ Sangeet’ through the various parts of the wedding ceremony, which were all explained in the programme. The programme itself looks like a wedding invitation, complete with gold tassel, to reinforce the feeling of coming to an actual wedding. As stated previously, there was an ambiguity of religions in the production, reflected in Kumar describing himself as a ‘Hindu Sikh’ (Kumar, 2013), a composite identity. However, he also states that he is definitely Punjabi, and that the production was representing Punjabi families and sensibilities. This was also the reason he wanted to include Bhangra music and dance, and approached Kuljit Bhamra to do the music for the first production. Bhamra states that he initially felt that both Kumar and his brother Andy, who does the choreography for many of Rifco’s productions, were very ‘Bollywood’ rather than Punjabi in what they wanted, both musically and aesthetically. Initially, Kumar asked for all the music to be recorded, and for the actors to lip-​sync to the songs: this would have kept to the conventions of Bollywood films. However, Bhamra felt that this would not be appropriate for the production due to portraying wedding ceremonies where people would usually sing, and so to have the actors lip-​syncing would look very strange when they were trying to make the audience feel they were at a ‘real’ wedding. As Bhamra had performed live music for Bombay Dreams as well as other shows such as The Ramayana (2000) and The Far Pavilions (2005), he believed that it was better to have live rather than recorded music. Eventually, there was a compromise of a mixture of live and recorded music, where a live singer (Shaheen Khan in the original production) performed a number of diegetic and non-​diegetic songs live, as well as having a backing track and some pre-​recorded music and songs (Bhamra, 2016). The songs themselves are a mixture of Punjabi and Bollywood, with some well-​ known traditional Punjabi songs such as ‘Gidda Pao’, ‘Madaania’ and ‘Rail Gaddi’, as well as famous Bollywood film songs including ‘Chand Mera Dil’ from the film Hum Kisise Kum Naheen (1977) used for the first dance at the wedding. This creates a composite mixing of Punjabi and Bollywood that reflects Kumar’s own experience, as well as that of Punjabi communities who also know Bollywood songs and

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often have them played at weddings. The songs were used as a means to punctuate the action, and as part of the dramaturgical structure based around the progressive ceremonies of the wedding. As well as the marker of identity of the arranged marriage, the markers of culture clash and inter-​generational conflict are also very present.This is particularly seen in the younger generation resenting having to keep to the traditions of their parents and grandparents, and the new ‘home’ of Britain is portrayed as a modern place where the youth are trying to escape from the ties to the ‘homeland’. Sona says to her mother Hema that she is ‘boxing yourself in with out-​dated traditions’ (Kumar, 2005: 100), and even the Aunty figure, Lata, similarly asks,‘Why do we uphold these traditions? When they make us so unhappy?’ (op. cit.: 101).The elder generation are portrayed as old-​fashioned in their views of morality, which in part relates to British values being in conflict with traditional Indian ones: ‘These English girls don’t stay … They don’t have our values’ (op. cit.: 22). The way women present themselves is also expected to be within the confines of a modest wife, and when Lata wears a sparkling sari, Pramila says to her, ‘We don’t want Madhuri [Dixit] film stars in our houses, pehnji, we want homely Tulsis’ (op. cit.: 72), indicating that a modest woman is preferable to one that is ‘showy’ like the Bollywood star Dixit. The figure of the Aunty is also very present in the production, mainly portrayed as a comic character who is loud and overbearing. Lata becomes ‘Aunty Director’ who tells the video cameraman exactly how he should film the wedding. One of the Aunties is just known as ‘Coventry Aunty’, and does not have a name beyond her location, playing on the joke of the large number of extended family relatives present. The men in particular mock the Aunties: Rishi: The Mutant Ninja aunties. Mahe sh:  Ninja aunties, Huh? That bad, the ones with the beards. (Op. cit.: 31) Kumar defends this portrayal of the figure of the Aunty: ‘During the workshops of The Deranged Marriage someone said to me “Lata is a caricature”, I laughed and said “then, you haven’t met my aunties” ’ (Rifco archives, f). However, the familiar figure of the interfering and annoying Aunty can be seen as a misogynistic portrayal of an older Indian woman, and these older women are often marginalised and treated badly in Indian society, so there is an uncomfortable residue of this in the way the Aunty has come to be represented in some South Asian productions in Britain. There are deliberate attempts to play against the stereotypes and conventions, and challenge the traditional views of the audience. One of these is in the figure of Hema, the widowed mother. As with the Aunties, South Asian widows are often treated as being of very low value, seen as bringing bad luck on their families. In the production, Hema meets her former love, and the happy ending is established by them marrying each other, which goes against the taboo of a widow remarrying. Another major transgression was that the intended groom for Sona is gay, and being forced into an arranged marriage. This type of arrangement

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is not uncommon in South Asian communities, but to see it portrayed on stage to South Asian family audiences is fairly provocative, especially as he confesses the truth, and the marriage is called off. The use of gay characters is a regular feature of Rifco’s productions, which could be seen as a reflection of Kumar’s own sexuality, as well as creating a queering of the diasporic space. However, this can risk alienating the core family audience that he wants to attract, and he admits that he was nervous about this happening in The Deranged Marriage, though this did not prove to be the case. The production was a huge success:  Kumar states that it was seen by over 30,000 people (Kumar, 2013). Rifco’s archival records of audience responses show that both South Asian and non-​Asian audiences appreciated the style and tone of the production: ‘A perfect blend of poignancy and humour while retaining a grip on the British Asian experience’; ‘As per my own marriage’; ‘Amusing and despite cultural differences –​awfully familiar’; ‘I loved the exotic music and colour. Very good in helping English people understand our Asian community –​great to see them in the theatre’ (Rifco archives, g). These last two comments echo Kumar’s view that he wants to bring in non-​Asian audiences to Asian productions as well, where they can feel that the ‘fourth wall has been removed, and we’re let into a very different culture’ (Kumar, 2013).The show received a cooler reception from the press. Critic Lyn Gardner states, ‘By no stretch of the imagination could you call this comedy a good play’ (Gardner, 2006). Kumar feels that the mainstream Western press tends not to understand what the productions are trying to do, and they are not the core audience that the company is aiming at: ‘We get reviewers who are not our audiences coming to see our work, and they have a certain stance on it’ (Kumar, 2013). However, he states that all reviewers, whether they like the work or not, acknowledge that the core audiences clearly appreciate it, echoed by Gardner in the same review:  ‘[The show] is made all the more enjoyable at Stratford East by the interventions of the Asian sections of the audience, who are wonderfully vocal in their (dis)approval of events unfolding on stage’ (Gardner, 2006). This unrestrained vocal response from the audience offers an intervention into the dominant forms of behaviour in mainstream theatre spaces, as did the dancing at the end of Bombay Dreams, and can be seen as a transnational movement of audience response and behaviour from cinemas in India to theatre in Britain, as discussed in Chapter 1. Kumar describes the original version of The Deranged Marriage as being the show that cemented the company’s relationship with their core audience (Kumar, 2013). The popularity of the production and their rising profile in mainstream theatre was supplemented by Rifco being made an Arts Council Regular Funded Organisation in 2005, and they have been regularly funded by the Arts Council since. The remounting of The Deranged Marriage in 2015 offered the opportunity to reflect on the changes in Britain over the prior ten years. In the programme, Kumar states that one of the major changes has been the use of smartphones and social media, and that this is now impacting on ‘modern’ approaches to the arranged marriage:

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The more traditional approach has given way to internet dating sites to do the job of ‘the matchmaker’. There are new descriptions like ‘self-​arranged’ where you pick the person within certain religious criteria often to appease families. […] [I]‌t seems the most outwardly ‘modern’ families are still using the old ways in their community lives. Even today in British Asian culture the wedding is the highlight of one’s life and families often spend much of their savings on big elaborate weddings to show the world their position and status. […] I found myself asking ‘What about love?’ […] But for many, family, duty and honour are more central to their lives. It’s ironic that India produces hundreds of Bollywood romances every year however, many families still insist that they must pick life partners. (Rifco archives, h) Kumar is indicating that the ‘modern’ British Asian marriage retains strong elements of the traditional, and that family and duty still play an important part in the lives of the core audiences that he is targeting. It is certainly the case that Asian weddings in Britain have become increasingly lavish and expensive: a report in the Financial Times states that ‘British Asian families on average spend between GBP 50,000 and GBP 70,000 on a ceremony, compared with GBP 17,000 to GBP 20,000 typically spent on a western equivalent’ (Moules, 2005). As Kumar suggests, this is in part to show wealth and status within communities, but also that the weddings are becoming increasingly ‘spectacular’ in part due to the influence of Bollywood, as well as greater spending ability:  ‘Asian weddings are big business in Britain, with the market worth £300m a year and rising. […] The rise has been linked to the glamour of Bollywood, celebrity culture and increased spending power’ (BBC News Channel, 2007). This is also part of a transnational flow from India, where the extravagant weddings of Bollywood celebrities such as Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bhachchan in 2007 are setting a benchmark of expectation and aspiration for Asian couples around the globe. The point Kumar makes about religion still being the basis of the choice for a spouse is reflected in the new types of online dating and marriage agencies specifically for South Asians, such as Shaadi, where the search sub-​categories are by mother tongue, language, religion or ‘community’, which essentially means caste, and the main search box is by gender, age, location and religion (www.shaadi.com). In keeping with this view of marriage, the portrayal in the plays of the inbetween-​ness of the diaspora in Britain is thus presented as being ‘modern’ within the confines of traditional values, which may encounter conflict during the play, but are resolved at the end, echoing the suggestion that the rules can be bent but not broken. One of the differences between the earlier productions of The Deranged Marriage and the 2015 revival is that due to the increase in the company’s funding and status, the play contains higher production values in the set and costume than that of the original. The new music composer and sound designer is Arun Ghosh, a British Asian musician and composer who works with jazz as well as Indian music, so offering a composite British Asian sound, though the production still contains

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familiar Punjabi songs including ‘Rail Gaddi’, as in the original version. Generally, there is much less use of music in the revival in comparison to the original, and it is all recorded, with the occasional moments of live singing to the tracks. Rather than having the songs punctuate the action and reflect the structure of the ceremonies, music tends to be used as a linking device between scenes and for background atmosphere. Ghosh’s instrumentation uses more Western instruments and sounds in contrast to Bhamra’s focus on traditional Punjabi and Bollywood music. Even the moments where the more ‘traditional’ Bhangra is heard, it is in an updated form. The song ‘Gidda Pao’ is performed in the sangeet, as it was in the original version, but with a new and younger singer performing it, and a new arrangement using more Western instrumentation. The reduction of focus on music means there is more of an emphasis on the action and dialogue, and perhaps conforms to Bhamra’s impression that Rifco makes plays that contain music, rather than musicals, due to Kumar’s lesser interest in the music itself (Bhamra, 2016). There are also some updated topical references in the revival, such as the white neighbour Mrs Henderson complaining about the noise from the ceremonies, to which Kiran replies, ‘She’s got a UKIP poster up in her front window’.2 The Aunty figure Lata is seen as even more of a joke in this version, as she talks about ‘these immigrants coming and taking our jobs. […] I see it in the Daily Mail, so it must be true’, referring to the increase in Eastern European migrants in the area.There is more of a focus on the theme of a love story in a romanticised and nostalgic manner, with references to Heer and Ranja, as well as Romeo and Juliet throughout. Another major change is that, in the original, Sona decides to stay single, whereas in the 2015 version, she ends up in a relationship with the white wedding photographer whom she had known at school. This results in an interracial relationship that may seem transgressive, however, the whole production feels somewhat more conservative than the original in its style, and not really having changed much in its representation of South Asian communities in ten years. Writer Kavita Bhanot, talking about such representations, suggests that: Over the last two decades, in part due to the success of a small number of novels, plays, films, music albums and television shows, the term ‘British Asian’ has emerged as an identity marker associated with the cultural practices of second-​generation South Asian immigrants, born and/​or brought up in Britain. There is one overwhelming narrative associated with this label: the tale of the second generation’s efforts to assimilate into mainstream British society, and the clash with their ‘traditional’ or ‘backward’ parents, who hinder this process. According to this reading, these parents make life difficult for their children, who simply want to be ‘normal’ –​to go out with friends, to have boyfriends or girlfriends, to drink, to wear Western clothes, to cut their hair in a Western style. The parents are seen to continue to hold on to traditions and customs that should be irrelevant to them now that they are living in a land of freedom, pleasure and plenty. (Bhanot, 2012)

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She asks if these are the only stories that Asians have to tell, and that: we must grapple with a new form of Orientalism where, by virtue of our brown skin and foreign-​sounding names, we are given licence to write about people and communities we know or care little about. We should not write with the same ignorance, generalisation and exoticism that Westerners have employed, we must catch ourselves before we fall into the trap of simplifying our identities or performing them. (ibid.) This could be an accusation levelled at Rifco’s work in potentially reinforcing such representations, however, unlike in Bhanot’s statement, Kumar is very aware and knowledgeable of the communities he is making work for, and engages with them to choose relevant themes that the audiences feel are important for them. Through the use of popular entertainment, the company is able to attract large South Asian family audiences who would not otherwise go to the theatre, and present them with some challenging ideas as well as creating an enjoyable experience. This multivalent reading of the productions is one that is found throughout this book in part due to the contradictions of the use of the ‘popular’, and it is perhaps more important to understand what each company is trying to do, and at whom the work is aimed. Kumar himself is very clear about his strategy of making popular entertainment in this way: There’s nothing wrong with being populist. Sometimes I get a lot of stick for not being worthy enough. But I want to bring in that audience. I know them, I am that audience, I know them so well, and there’s a lot of different types of work out there, and we’re very clear with what we do. We want to be relevant and accessible. Of course we want to do good work that’s high quality. But what’s important to me is that we keep telling Asian stories, we keep doing new writing. (Kumar, 2010) Rifco may use some stereotyping in their productions, but their style and approach resonate with the South Asian audiences who come to see their work, and being on a mainstream stage where they ‘get the joke’ and see representations of their lives and issues is a powerful way to enable an engagement with the space of cultural production that might not be possible otherwise. The focus on this particular kind of entertainment for a specific target audience suggests that it is likely that this would be a very different audience than would go to a production by a company such as Tara Arts. This reinforces an important point in this discussion about the heterogeneous nature of British South Asian audiences and the work produced by companies, and the danger of homogenising these as a marginal element of theatre in Britain, rather than offering a deeper interrogation of the multiplicity and complexity of the productions and communities.

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Britain’s Got Bhangra Rifco’s work aims to represent South Asians in contemporary Britain, and this is seen particularly clearly in their production of Britain’s Got Bhangra (2010, remounted in 2011, revived in 2015, all touring nationally), which tells the story of South Asian migration and integration into Britain through the development of the form of British Bhangra. The production also becomes a site of contestation between ‘authenticity’ and adaptation, as well as traditional values versus the dangers of ‘modern’ society embodied in the move from India to Britain. Kumar grew up during the initial British Bhangra boom in the 1980s, and has a nostalgic re-​ memory of the music and bands of that time. When conducting community workshops with young Asians, he realised that they were listening to very different forms of music, and decided he wanted to tell the story of the development of Bhangra which he aligns with the development of the South Asian communities in Britain. He undertook research by speaking with many of the older second-​generation Bhangra artists who had been in bands such as Alaap, Heera, Holle Holle and DCS; the lead singer of DCS, Shin, subsequently played the lead role of Twinkle in the show, which also acted as a draw to audiences. The plot of the production reflects this twinning of the story of South Asian immigration into Britain and the development of British Bhangra. Twinkle, the son of a farmer from the Punjab, leaves his wife behind in order to earn money by migrating to Britain in the 1970s. He moves to Southall, and starts working as a van driver, where he encounters racism including the 1979 uprisings in Southall that led to the death of Blair Peach. He is a talented singer, and begins singing religious music in gurdwaras, and then traditional Bhangra music at weddings, where he also starts drinking. The story moves into the 1980s where he is part of a British Bhangra band playing Western and electronic instruments. He takes part in the Daytimer concerts, where he has a one-​night stand that results in an illegitimate mixed-​race son, Jason, which is only revealed to him at the end. The scene shifts to the 1990s with the DJ culture replacing the bands and remixing the Bhangra songs without giving royalties to the original bands. Twinkle eventually becomes impoverished and a drunkard, until performing on a talent show, the ‘Britain’s Got Bhangra’ awards, where he reverts to singing the original traditional form of Bhangra. Jason is an R&B singer, and they perform together at the end, showing the mixing of styles that has resulted from the history of migration and adaptation of forms. Twinkle hands over his toombi to Jason, showing that he is passing on the music to the next generation. The reporter, who has been used as a framing device to indicate the change in time period throughout, summarises the story of the play which is also the narrative of the change in Britain over 40  years of transnational movement from India to contemporary Britain: ‘From humble beginnings in the fields of the Punjab … And this for you who haven’t noticed –​Britain’s got Bhangra.’3 In this way, Bhangra becomes the representation of the narrative of migration and integration of South Asians in Britain.

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This narrative mimics the story of the development of British Bhangra music that was discussed in Chapter 1.When Kumar interviewed the band members from the 1980s, he observed that: [t]‌hey missed home when they came here, and it really was the immigrant song, that they were singing from back home. Most of them were security guards, cleaners, or postmen and so on, and most of them would sing when they were working. (Kumar, 2010) This establishes Bhangra as part of a nostalgic re-​memory of the ‘homeland’ of the Punjab.The scenes in the production that are based in the Punjab reinforce this, with a representation of a rural and simple place and people, performing Bhangra in the fields in traditional outfits. The Punjab is portrayed as the place of authenticity and purity, both in the forms of music and song that migrate to Britain and are then transformed, but also in the lifestyle that is simple and ‘pure’ which becomes ‘polluted’ through the contamination of modern Britain. It is also part of the rural ‘peasant’ culture of the Punjab, with Bhangra supposedly originating in performances in the field, as portrayed in the ‘Field Song’ from the show, pictured in Figure 5.1. Roy suggests that this is part of an identification with the jat or farmer communities, which is now being seen as more of a ‘caste’ in the UK, and that the music is a way to represent that identity:

Song’ in Britain’s Got Bhangra. Source: David Fisher, courtesy of Rifco Arts. FIGURE 5.1 The ‘Field

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Diasporic Panjabi musical production, in fact, has converged on jat, or rustic, music in the transformation of Asian, Indian or Panjabi ethnicity. […] Other Bhangra artists, too, take great pride in tracing their ancestry to the Panjabi jat, or peasant, which often becomes particularized as a narrow jat caste lineage. (Roy, 2010: 233) The use of the music in the diaspora is thus also a means of embodying a mythologised idea of ancestry and a rural ‘authentic’ past that is nostalgically valorised in the present. In Britain’s Got Bhangra, the music played in the Punjab is accompanied by the simplicity of the toombi and dhol as instruments, and the first image in the production is that of a toombi on the curtain, as the sound of an actual instrument is heard. In this first scene, Twinkle is a young child, and his mother sings ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ to him, saying that she is leaving him ‘the gift of music’. As an adult he says, ‘So many harvests have passed, and I have always kept your music in my heart’, thus making the connection between his mother and the ‘homeland’ through the music. The Punjab is seen in a romanticised and idealised way as the nostalgic ‘homeland’ that represents the past and traditional values that need to be held on to, and integrated into the modern life in Britain in order to stay true to both the music and the values of being a Punjabi Sikh. This representation of the Punjab is placed in contrast to that of the ‘home’ of Britain. Kumar set the production in Southall to show the story of the development of Bhangra music in London. The quietness and space of the scenery of the Punjab gives way to the noise and bustle of Southall Broadway, with a backdrop of shops and market stalls that was repeated in the scenery of Bend It Like Beckham: the musical which is similarly set in Southall. The song ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ is performed with new lyrics to indicate the year: ‘Land of Hope and Glory, Mother of the Free, 1977, Silver Jubilee.’ There are references to political events throughout which help to orientate the fast scene changes that represent shifts in time periods. Following on from the portrayal of the 1979 uprisings in Southall, Thatcher is congratulated on her election victory, and the figures in power in the council are shown to be openly Conservative. This moves through the decades to end in 2011 with references to the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton (whose mother’s family had lived in Southall), and a Conservative Sikh politician indicating multicultural Southall saying, ‘This is our big society’, echoing the words of David Cameron. The figure of the Aunty is also present, with elder South Asian women shown commenting on the action, and changes to their age and physicality reflect the shifts in decades until they are seen pushing walker frames (see Figure 5.2). The changes to British Bhangra music are the foundation for the presentation of the story of South Asians in the production. For Kumar: British bhangra music is unique to this country, and has been drumming in our cars and homes for over 30 years now. […] How could I bring British bhangra to the theatre and keep it organic and honest? It was important to me that the audience, who really know this music, didn’t feel cheated that it

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in Britain’s Got Bhangra. Source: David Fisher, courtesy of Rifco Arts. FIGURE 5.2 The ‘Aunty’ figures

had been watered down for a non-​bhangra theatre audience. Since this is a story of music, musical theatre was the only way to tell it. […] [T]‌he story of bhangra and immigration were inseparable … this is the immigrants’ song that has fused and made a new home here. (Kumar, Rifco archives, i) Rather than using pre-​existing familiar songs from each of the decades, he chose to instead work with composer Sumeet Chopra to write new songs. Chopra had been brought up on the music of Indian classical, Bollywood and British Bhangra, and was part of some of the original Bhangra bands including Kala Preet, Shava Shava, Premi and Alaap. He composed new songs in the styles of each of the eras to reflect the change from the ‘traditional’ Bhangra, through the Westernisation with the bands in the 1980s, the DJ culture in the 1990s and remixing with R&B, hip hop and house which is a feature of contemporary Bhangra. There were two lyricists: Douglas Irvine writing in English, and Bittu Denowalia in Punjabi, and the decisions as to when a character would sing in either language meant that for Irvine, they were ‘aware we were writing new rules for musical theatre and bhangra’ (Rifco archives, i). The changes in music to show the different decades were also reflected in the changes in costume and dance styles, choreographed by Andy Kumar, which moved from the ‘traditional’ dance style in the Punjab scenes, through the disco-​influenced moves in the 1980s and the contemporary composite styles including hip hop at the end, as illustrated by the two images in Figure 5.3.

FIGURE 5.3  1980s

style of costume and performance (top) and contemporary hip hop-​ influenced style (bottom). Source: David Fisher, courtesy of Rifco Arts.

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The overarching narrative of Britain’s Got Bhangra is that of belonging and the integration of South Asians into Britain, using the story of the Punjabi communities and the music of Bhangra as the homogenised representation for South Asian communities. Despite there being conflict at points, this story ultimately results in a positive and uplifting message of a life in the ‘home’ of Britain that still nostalgically looks back to the ‘homeland’ of the Punjab, and yet is also modern and convivial in a multicultural society where it is possible to be both British and Asian. In this way, Bhangra has become a marker of identity for British South Asians and British South Asian culture; it was created in Britain, and reflects the development of the histories of the communities as well as the music, and the composite nature of identities, seen in the costumes and movements of the cast in Figure 5.4. Rifco’s productions are unashamedly popular entertainment, drawing on Bollywood and Bhangra as well as a form of comedy developed within British South Asian cultural forms on stage and screen, which are aimed at South Asian family audiences to both entertain and reflect back to them issues that are part of their lives. As stated, the company is regularly funded by the Arts Council, and in the Arts Council Annual Review of Rifco in 2011–​2012, the report notes the success of the remount of Britain’s Got Bhangra in terms of the audiences that it attracted: ‘[the show] successfully engaged mainstream audiences. This is a significant step for the company who has in the past been considered as primarily

FIGURE 5.4  Shin

as Twinkle, wearing a sparkling gold jacket with a Union Jack on the back, and the company showing the composite identities of Asian and British in Britain’s Got Bhangra. Source: David Fisher, courtesy of Rifco Arts.

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“niche” ’ (Arts Council, 2012: 1). This indicates that Rifco has been able to move from the margins into the mainstream of British theatre, with the representations of the communities being seen by an audience that identified as being 44 per cent white British (ibid.). For Kumar, Rifco’s ability to attract a diverse audience is due to subject matter and representation of the communities through themes that are entertaining and unthreatening: I think the resistance in getting diverse British audiences to theatres is about making work for them. It’s about how it’s focussed. Sometimes I go and see something that is supposedly made for me, I’m sitting there as a British Asian thinking well that’s from a very different point of view. I  might not want to watch a piece of work about terrorists! I think we’ve got to make work for everyone and be more inclusive. What Rifco does is celebrate British diversity and our audiences have grown hugely and we’re selling out theatres across the country. (Kumar, 2016) This statement indicates that the decisions in representations of South Asians in Britain that Kumar makes in his productions, create a form of theatre that draws on elements of transadaptation of the music and dance of India as well as British culture to offer a composite view of life in the diaspora as it has developed through the histories of migration. These representations in the two productions discussed are of the Punjabi communities in Britain, and this can suggest a discourse of Punjabi-​ness as the dominant narrative and aesthetic for British South Asian-​ness. This is not reflected in all of Rifco’s productions, however, where characters from other communities are placed in the leading roles. As well as productions that use broad comedy, there are others that take a different approach, such as Harvey Virdi’s Meri Christmas (2006) which poignantly shows the plight of elder Asians living in care homes, and Rina Fatania’s funny and moving portrayal of a woman suffering from mental health issues in It Ain’t All Bollywood (2008). However, for Kumar, Britain’s Got Bhangra was significant for Rifco because ‘it made us a brand. This company is no longer emerging’ (Kumar, 2013), and instead he felt that they were taken seriously as an established company as a result of the production. Ultimately, Rifco offers a positive view of integration and multicultural conviviality, reflected in the lyrics to the song ‘Britain’s Got Bhangra’ cited at the start of the chapter, where Bhangra and Britain come together as one, echoing Dudrah’s point from earlier, that with Bhangra, ‘we see and hear what it means to be British and Asian’ (Dudrah, 2012: 70).

Bend It Like Beckham: the musical Gurinder Chadha has explained her decision to adapt her film of Bend It Like Beckham to a stage musical version as being a desire to articulate the current state of the nation through musical theatre:

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Initially I resisted the suggestion to give Bend It Like Beckham a musical treatment, but as time went on I realised how significant I thought the film had been in terms of race relations in this country, the presence of the Asian community and how very little came after it that celebrated who we are as a nation in the same way. […] Our ambition, is to create a totally new British musical, with a different musical language. A  musical that speaks to us of today, the last 30, 40 years of Britain and of where we are as a nation. The Asian influences that are there are basically Punjabi West London –​those that I have grown up with –​fused with West End musical influences. A totally new British musical that speaks to us of today and of where we are as a nation. What we are trying to do is make a stakehold for those of us who believe we live in a brilliant nation that is all the better for being as diverse and as interesting culturally as it is, and that it isn’t just one community that has created this. (Chadha, 2015) This places the relevance of the musical to British life in 2015, when it opened, emphasised by Chadha relating the film from 2002 to Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics: ‘What Danny [Boyle] created was that sense of inclusion for everybody … it was such a fantastic moment’ (in Jones, 2015). Her vision of contemporary Britain is one of multicultural inclusion, where diversity is celebrated through the mixing of musical forms placed on a West End stage in a commercial musical theatre production. Not only is this a particular view of British-​ness, it is also a specifically ‘Punjabi West London’ sense of British Asian-​ ness, which is based in her own experience of having grown up in Southall. As stated in Chapter 1, the nation is different now from the summer of 2001 when the film was made, and as the stage musical is still set in that time rather than the present, it is important to question how far it is fully able to interrogate current concerns in contemporary multicultural Britain. Indeed, the film itself can be seen as offering a somewhat conservative view of South Asian families and the issues addressed, as discussed below, so placing the film on stage 13 years later invites examination of how far it has been able to offer a portrayal of contemporary South Asian communities through a theatrical form.While this opens up many areas of discussion in the musical, for the purposes of this book this will be limited to examining elements related to the use of Bhangra music and dance, and how this portrays issues of composite identities of Punjabi-​ness, British Asian-​ness, as well as religion and family, and the markers of identity of culture clash and inter-​generational conflict. The film of Bend It Like Beckham has been discussed by film and media scholars including Sarita Malik, who contextualises it in the genre of films about South Asians that focus on the family: The family too has been one of the defining tropes through which the South Asian community has been represented in media discourse, as bound by

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traditional and patriarchal frameworks, albeit through comedic melodrama (consider My Beautiful Laundrette, Bend It Like Beckham, Bhaji on the Beach, East Is East, and West Is West).These social comedy films have typically offered a satirical take on South Asian family life, from a second-​generation perspective, arguing the case for transgressive identities (interracial, interethnic, homosexual) and assimilation into liberal, western norms through a critique of, as Pnina Werbner put it, ‘the older generation’s profligate consumption, false ethics, superstitious religiosity, blind prejudices and obsession with honour and status’ (Werbner 2004, 901). (Malik, 2013: 521) Malik is suggesting that the film is situated within similar discourses discussed in the previous two chapters of a second-​generation portrayal of inter-​generational conflict, while remaining in the confines of a patriarchal and traditional representation of the South Asian family. Guido Rings similarly states that the film ‘follows the traditional pattern of generational conflicts within the British Asian diaspora’ (Rings, 2011: 115), and for Claudia May, the film displays the trope of culture clash in the metaphorical playing of a football game:‘Jess metaphorically plays a precarious match of identity formation as she paradoxically conforms to as well as resists fully prescribing to identities that encroach upon her sense of “selfhood” ’ (May, 2010: 252). The film can be seen, therefore, as an exposition of multiple and sometimes contradictory identities based in a contestation between family and traditional values, and individual freedom and modern desires. Jess Bhamra, an anglicised version of her Punjabi name Jesminder, breaks the conventions of how she is expected to behave by becoming part of a women’s football team, led by the male coach, Joe, and making firm friends with her fellow white English teammate Jules (Juliet). Jess’s sister Pinky conforms to traditional roles by being engaged to a Sikh boy. When Jess’s parents, and the wider community, find out about her playing football against their wishes, there is conflict that also threatens to destroy Pinky’s dreams, until all is resolved and forgiven, with both girls achieving their dreams by Pinky having her lavish wedding and Jess leaving to take up a football scholarship in an American university, accompanied by Jules. Themes of having dreams at odds with family and community expectations, overcoming racial prejudice and finding a way to achieve goals by ‘bending’ rules rather than breaking them are apparent in the film. In particular, the importance of women having the freedom to explore their dreams is emphasised, but also confined within the pressures of the expected performance of ‘femininity’, as well as Jess and Pinky being the bearers of honour for the family and community. As Chacko states in relation to the film, ‘[w]‌omen in the diaspora pay a greater price as a racialized immigrant identity’ (Chacko, 2010: 83), and the need to ‘protect’ women as the bearer of honour and tradition confines them to a role bound by patriarchy and tradition. While it is possible to escape this to an extent, as Jess ultimately demonstrates, the film offers her a way to do this that still keeps her family happy, so she is able to be modern as long as she does so within traditional boundaries that may have been expanded, but still hold firm.

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The stage musical production keeps many of these themes, while also making some significant changes that offer different nuances to the portrayal of identities of setting and character. The film was set in Hounslow, a few miles south of Southall, and in the flight path of Heathrow airport, identified in the film from the beginning with the roaring sound of a low-​flying aircraft. Jess and Pinky visit Southall to shop on The Broadway, creating a scene of South Asian culture and colour in contrast to the green and more middle-​class portrayal of their family home in Hounslow. However, the setting of the stage musical is transferred to Southall, and there are many references to Southall as a place and ‘home’ throughout. As stated, Chadha was brought up in Southall, and the town is a centre of Punjabi Sikh communities and played an important part in the development of British Bhangra. It is also well known as being ‘Little India’, and so a point of reference for both Asians and non-​Asians in having a place of identification of Asian-​ness. Southall offered the means to examine composite identities of British and Asian through its histories of the migration and struggle of Asian communities, as well as the aesthetics of the town itself being able to show the conflicts and cohesions of communities. The song ‘UB2’, discussed below (UB2 is one of the postcodes for Southall), is the first main song of the show that sets the scene firmly in Southall, on the main street of The Broadway. The backdrop for the scene depicts the actual shops and restaurants that are found on The Broadway (see Figure 5.6), and so would be familiar to audience members who have visited Southall, as well as offering a sense of ‘authenticity’ to the setting. Similarly, a specially commissioned front curtain offers a composite montage of images related to Southall and its histories.The shades of reds and pinks offer a palate suggestive of South Asian colours, with Bollywood-​style motifs and decorations. Contained within the buta droplet shapes are images showing some of the culturally composite themes in the show: a football pitch; the shops on Southall Broadway, and the blue gas-holder tower in Southall; several Union Jacks; a Bhangra dhol drummer; an iconic London black taxi and red bus as well as the Millennium Dome; Sikh gurus; a turbaned cricket player; and the face of Blair Peach. This sets up the vision of a multicultural society that is both British and Asian in a mosaic of multivalent identities. Another key change from the film to the musical was a shift in emphasis of the storyline. There is less focus on the developing relationship between Jess and Joe, and the character of Joe plays a much reduced part in the musical in comparison to the film. Instead, there is a greater focus and representation of the family, particularly Jess’s Punjabi family and related wider community. The setting of the family home in Southall becomes a major feature in the action of not just the drama of Jess’s story, but also as a representation of the Punjabi Sikh domestic sphere. Chapter 2 discussed the use of objects and the performance of rituals from the ‘homeland’ of the subcontinent in the ‘home’ of the diaspora as a way to create a re-​memory for the migrant communities, as well as a means to portray the ‘authenticity’ of the theatrical representation. This allows the characters to interact with the ‘home’ in different ways that identifies their relationship to what ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ represent. The Bhamra’s home is represented in the show through the outline of

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a house which allows for the hanging of strings of lights outside to indicate that a wedding is taking place, and the switching off and on of the lights is associated with shifts in the plot. The living room is the main playing area, and it becomes the site of performance of the traditional rituals associated with a Punjabi Sikh wedding of the engagement and sangeet ceremonies, thus transforming it into a sacred as well as secular space. The focus on this aspect of the sacred is also a change from the film, as the stage musical offers a greater portrayal of Sikhism. A large image of Guru Nanak is flown in to cover a significant portion of the outline of the house in a number of key scenes, emphasising the importance of the role of religion in the Bhamra household. Jess (Natalie Dew) sings a prayer to Guru Nanak, asking for help in making the choice between family and football. As stated previously, the Sikh chant ‘Satnam Shri Waheguru’ is performed several times during the show, initially during the first musical sequence after Jess sings of being a dreamer, and wanting to achieve her ambitions, showing her inner conflict between tradition and freedom from the start. This intervention of a sacred chant from Sikhism into the secular space of a West End stage caused reactions amongst the Punjabi Sikh members of the audience. In all five performances I attended, the hearing of the chant resulted in laughter due to familiarity, as well as the incongruity of hearing a chant usually performed in the sacred space of the gurdwara in the very different space of the theatre. One informant told me that his elderly mother came to see the show. She does not speak English and so did not understand very much, but the first time she heard the chant and saw the image of Guru Nanak on stage, she took her shoes off as if she were in a gurdwara. This action transformed the theatre into being a sacred space for her, due to the live presence and performance of the chant and image, and reinforced the ‘home’ of both the Bhamra’s house and the diaspora as being a place where composite identities of Sikhism, Punjabi-​ness and British-​ness live together. The use of the image of and prayer to Guru Nanak offers a means to portray Jess’s inner conflict. This is also seen in her name being both Jess and Jesminder:  she is called Jess outside the house and community, and Jesminder within it. The set of the house contains the space of her bedroom which is seen as both separate to and contained within the place of ‘home’. In this room, she has pictures of David Beckham on her walls, and in the privacy of her own separate space, speaks to him about her dreams and frustrations, in a similar way as she does to Guru Nanak in the living room, thus offering a prayer to Beckham in the secular space as much as to the Guru in the sacred one. This conflict is embodied in the finale of Act One, where the images of Guru Nanak and Beckham are both seen in the same space of the setting of the house, reflecting Jess’s inner dilemma about disobeying her family by flying to Germany to take part in a football match. An actor impersonating Beckham appears during this dream sequence and dances with her, leading to her decision to side with him and her dream, rather than her family and tradition. When the deceit is discovered and Jess agrees to conform to her family’s wishes, she takes down

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the pictures of Beckham from her bedroom, signifying that only Guru Nanak now has space in her life. At the end, when she is allowed to go to America, her mother insists she takes a picture of Guru Nanak with her to remind her of who she is, thus ensuring that she keeps hold of her tradition and family values within her new life, so conforming while also having freedom. The portrayal of conflict and harmony between British and Asian is also seen in the use of music and dance in the show. Chadha gathered together a creative team of both Western and Asian practitioners, as did Lloyd Webber in Bombay Dreams. Chadha directed the production, though she had no prior experience of directing in theatre, and the book was by Chadha and her husband Paul Mayeda Berges, who together had also written the script for the film. The show was produced by Sonia Friedman, one of the most influential and powerful producers in contemporary British theatre. The song lyrics were written by Charles Hart, and the music composed by Howard Goodall, with Kuljit Bhamra assisting in the orchestrations and percussion parts. The choreographer was Aletta Collins, with Shelby Williams acting as associate choreographer and resident director. This resulted in a cultural composite that was reflected in the music and dance by bringing together elements from Punjabi and Western forms and styles. Shelby Williams states that a key term they used during the creation process was ‘authenticity’, and how this was reflected in the use of music and dance (Williams, 2015). Issues of the notion of ‘authenticity’ were discussed in Chapter 1 in relation to how this can be used to create a sense of legitimacy of cultural production, and the quest for ‘authenticity’ in the show reflects this. Bhamra assisted Goodall in becoming familiar with Bhangra music and rhythms, and finding ways to have the sounds of Bhangra being both distinct from and integrated into the Western musical theatre sounds at various moments in the show.The eight-​piece orchestra, placed in sight of the audience on a balcony above the stage, consisted of Western musicians on keyboard, strings and guitar, and two Indian percussionists, Bhamra and Bindi Sagoo, playing a variety of percussion instruments including the dhol, tabla and dholak. In this way, the percussion, and hence rhythm, became an important means to indicate Punjabi identity in the music of the songs, particularly through the use of the familiar Bhangra rhythm played on percussion, illustrated in Figure 5.5 below. This rhythm is heard on Indian percussion instruments during moments of explicit Punjabi music, such as in the engagement song and the beginning of the

FIGURE 5.5  Bhangra

rhythm, which is played with a swing, showing the accent on the last and first beats of the bar. Source: Jerri Daboo.

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wedding ceremony to denote ‘traditional’ Bhangra. It is also heard during songs representing multicultural Britain to indicate a line sung by a Punjabi character in alternation with a Western rhythm for a line sung by a non-​Asian character. An example is in the song ‘UB2’, which describes the multicultural mix of Southall. This begins with Western musical rhythms for lines about the cultural mixture of Southall: Saturday morning in Southall Broadway, so many glories in store! Saucepans and saris, and scented candles; Hoovers and holdalls with dented handles, bangles and bhangra and more! What else is Saturday for? (Hart, 2015: 2–​3) The Bhangra rhythms are introduced when the Punjabi characters sing about their specific experience of Southall. This is split into the contrasting experiences and language of first and second generations, though these are still united with the Bhangra rhythms playing underneath: First Generation: Where it’s a little bit Punjab, (Hey!) Second Generation: a little bit UK. (Braa!) First Generation: A little splash of saffron Second Generation: on a back-​drop of grey. All: ’cause the skies are like lead from September to May, chez nous in UB2! (op. cit.: 5–​6) The lyrics show the united sense of ‘home’ despite the difference in generations, linked by the rhythms of Bhangra, though the dance styles of the generations are different, as discussed below. In order to further create a mixing of sounds, Kuljit Bhamra also integrated two Indian singers in the production, Shahid Abbas Khan and Rekha Sawhney, to whom Bhamra gave the label of ‘Heritage Singers’. Originally they were going to be placed with the band on the balcony, but in order to have more bodies on stage to create greater spectacle in scenes such as the wedding party, they both became part of the stage action, needing to learn the relevant dances as well. Khan’s contribution to the singing was heard particularly in his performance of alaaps, or highly ornamented expositions of melody, in particular songs such as ‘UB2’ which added a strong sonic landscape of India to the Western musical orchestration.

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FIGURE 5.6  Shahid Abbas Khan in front, with the company, singing ‘UB2’.The backdrop

depicts shops and restaurants found on the actual Southall Broadway. Source:  photograph of the original West End production by Ellie Kurttz, courtesy of Sonia Friedman Productions.

Rekha Sawhney has a key moment where she sings the solo song ‘Heer’ in the sangeet ceremony before the wedding. This is a traditional Punjabi song that tells part of the tragic love story of Heer and Ranja. In the scene, Mrs Bhamra (Natasha Jayetileke) says to Jess, ‘You must learn all these old songs like I did from my mother, then you will know them when it is your turn’,4 thus making Jess into the inheritor and bearer of traditions from the ‘homeland’. Mrs Bhamra explains that the song is one dating back generations: ‘Your great-​g randmothers have been singing this song for over 500 years. Every time a wife leaves her old life and starts a new one.’ This creates a nostalgic look back to an historical past and lineage, as well as the ritualised mourning that takes place when a bride leaves her home to go to her husband’s, in effect becoming part of his family rather than her old one. In the show, Sawhney begins the song accompanied only by a harmonium, singing in Punjabi. As the song continues it is interspersed with lines from a previous song by the Punjabi elders, performed by other characters singing of their reasons for migration, and the fulfilment of those dreams in the successful lives of their children: ‘This is what our dreaming was for.’ In this way, the migrant dream is fulfilled by Pinky (Preeya Kalidas) following traditional values by getting married, so keeping the ‘homeland’ present in the ‘home’. This offers a particular view of ‘success’ which is that of conforming to traditional values, even while having economic success in the new ‘home’. This is in contrast to Jess who is deviating from this vision of the migrant dream by taking a non-​traditional path, even though this is part of her experience of having freedom of choice as a second-​generation Asian born in the diaspora.

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The song ‘People Like Us’ reflects this contradictory view of the first generation in the new ‘home’. Mr Bhamra (Tony Jayawardena) sings of his experience of racism when he first arrived in Britain, and that this is why he is trying to protect Jess from a similar experience. The song begins: There once was a man with a dream in his heart, with a dream just the same as you. (Hart, 2015: 38) Mr Bhamra aligns himself with Jess in understanding the importance of having a dream, though in his case this was the migrant dream of a better life in Britain. His reality was different: People like us don’t join the clubs, jump the queues, get served in pubs. People like us must learn where we fit in. […] Basic freedoms, basic rights! Yes it’s true we have these prizes in our sights! In this England, in these times, many acts which once were common, now are crimes. And strong and weak, all men are equal, clearly, well, nearly. […] But people like us are only free to do What they allow us to. (op. cit.: 39–​41) Towards the end of the show, Jess reminds him of these sentiments by singing the same song back to him with different lyrics, to point out that while he was not able to fulfil his dream of playing cricket due to racist attitudes, she can now fulfil her dream of playing football. This indicates the change between the first and second generations, where opportunities are now possible that were not before, and it is this argument that finally convinces him to let her go to America to fulfil her dream: People like us deserve to shine, not content to toe the line. People like us can’t keep on giving in. People are changing all around, trying to find some middle ground. If people just see beyond a person’s skin, then maybe we can win. The song is accompanied by a simple orchestration of tabla, strings and keyboard. This reflects a general tendency in the music for songs by the Punjabi characters to be accompanied by fewer instruments than the more Western musical theatre numbers, creating a distinction in sonic landscape of identification through the orchestration. This distinction and blending is also reflected in the dance, with the mixing of Bhangra with Western musical theatre dance styles. Even with Bhangra, this is distinguished further with both ‘traditional’ Bhangra performed by the elders and

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‘modern’ Bhangra that incorporates elements of hip hop and street dance to reflect the changes in performance by the modern urban youth. Aletta Collins trained with London Contemporary Dance particularly in the Graham style of contemporary dance. In order to become familiar with Bhangra she went to a hip hop Bhangra class, and the teaching of Bhangra was supplemented by Pardeep Dhand who took part in rehearsals as the ‘Bhangra Dance Consultant’. Shelby Williams explains that they wanted to focus on a sense of ‘authenticity’ for the Bhangra dancing, particularly amongst the younger dancers ‘because of what the Bhangra has to satisfy in the show’ (Williams, 2015). They introduced more hip hop into the Bhangra style than would have been the case in 2001 when the film was produced, to offer a more realistic portrayal of how it is being danced today, also showing the shift in style of dance over that time period. She states that they felt there were many movement connections between hip hop and Bhangra as it is now performed, and that this led to a ‘blurry line’ between the two, with a ‘Bhangra top and a hip hop bottom’ (ibid.). This ‘modern’ way of dancing Bhangra has a much lower centre of gravity, with the feet closer to the floor, and this offers an easier way for the performers to speed up, repeat movements and change directions, suiting the needs of the choreography on stage. The elder Punjabis are seen dancing ‘traditional’ Bhangra in the wedding ceremonies such as the engagement, sangeet and wedding parties. Elements of the ‘traditional’ style were also brought into the choreography, for example when singing ‘Sadaa Chardhi Kala’, a Sikh expression of joy and celebration, movements from ‘traditional’ Bhangra such as those miming the sowing of seeds or cutting crops are integrated into the choreography, harking back to the romanticised view of the rural jat farmers discussed in Britain’s Got Bhangra. They also mime movements from the ‘traditional’ dance such as using the sapps, which are lattice-​like percussion instruments, and sticks and swords. The elder Punjabi men and women performed different styles of dance. The men generally performed energetic Bhangra moves, whereas the women danced a variety of traditional Punjabi women’s dances, including Kakli and Giddha, as well as some Kathak in the engagement party scene, which contrasts with Pinky and the younger women dancing ‘modern’ hip hop-​style Bhangra (see Figure 5.7). Kuljit Bhamra indicates how the music in the engagement scene reflected this difference in dance styles of the two generations: The idea was to pit the elders dancing to traditional Bhangra against the youngsters dancing to a hip hop bhangra, a sort of face-​off. Howard [Goodall] constructed the piece based on a traditional Punjabi toombi riff that he played on electronic instruments. […] The sections with the younger generation had hip hop beats added, and the cousins chanted ‘Go Pinky! Go Pinky!’ during her dance bit. (Bhamra, 2016) The difference in dance styles between the elder Punjabi men and women reinforces the gender differentiations which are key in traditional Punjabi culture, and

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FIGURE  5.7 The

engagement scene, showing the outline of the Bhamra house with strings of lights, with Preeya Kalidas as Pinky dancing in the front, and men and women in separate spaces on either side. Source:  photograph of the original West End production by Ellie Kurttz, courtesy of Sonia Friedman Productions.

these differentiations become part of Jess’s identity conflict as she battles against the expected behaviour of her as a woman, needing to learn to cook and dress properly, in contrast to her wanting to play football, seen as antithetical to feminine behaviour. The conflict in portrayal of gender is also represented by Jess being forced to wear saris and high heels, rather than her football kit and boots. All the conflicts in her life are embodied in the scene of the wedding party and football match in the climax of the second half through the use of dance and music. In the film, this scene involved cutting between the hall where the wedding party was taking place, and the outdoor setting of the football match. In the stage show, Collins created a complex choreography and staging where the two ‘sides’ of the wedding guests and football team were on stage together, each performing their own contrasting movement language, and weaving in and out of each other, in part through the use of the ‘train’ dancing in ‘Rail Gaddi’ mentioned in Chapter 2. The mixture of Asian and non-​Asian elements was also reflected in the music which drew together previous styles, melodies and songs from the show, with each ‘side’ of the Punjabi family and the football team singing to Jess, showing her conflict and confusion about what she should choose to do. However, as Williams states, ‘at the peak of the wedding, the moment where Jess gets fouled, both things have to be working in harmony. So it’s the first time that football and her family are not in conflict’ (Williams, 2015). In

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order to show this moment of harmony, there are four bars where all the performers are dancing the same moves and singing in the same rhythm: so that for four eights, everyone is doing the same thing, and that’s in her head when she can finally set out and sing ‘Glorious’ for that final time. And so there was a sense of harmony for her worlds finally aligning. (ibid.) The choreography and music are thus used to represent the different conflicts in Jess’s life, as well as the resolution between them, allowing her to become both Jess and Jesminder and score the winning goal which delivers her dream by her being offered the scholarship to go to America. This theme of dreams for both generations operates in different ways for the characters. For Mr and Mrs Bhamra, the migrant dream was of providing a successful lifestyle for their children in the new ‘home’ of the diaspora, and this success includes holding on to the traditional family and community values of being a Punjabi Sikh. The two sisters have very different dreams: Pinky wants the life that is expected of her that involves a big Punjabi wedding, while Jess wants to escape from the confines of the traditional roles in order to have the freedom to play football. Both sisters’ dreams are seen as equally valid in the stage musical, and in the climax to the wedding party/​football match scene, both of them are held aloft by their respective ‘teams’ of the family and football squad to show that both have triumphed in their own way. Bend It Like Beckham: the musical occurs at the end of the time period covered in this book, and sits in contrast to both Fourteen Songs and Bombay Dreams that were at the start. Whereas both earlier musicals were set in India, Beckham offers a production that is set in Britain, and creates a firmly British South Asian narrative of the second generation’s struggle between tradition and modernity, but one that is resolved by bending the rules without breaking them, thus staying within the conservative frame of the family and community, even if the boundaries have been expanded. Speaking on another of Chadha’s films, Bhaji On the Beach (1993), Sarita Malik states that: we do not get the sense that any one culture has ‘crossed over’ or been assimilated, but that a new form of cultural identity is emerging. This hybrid identity is ‘British-​Asianness’, a fluid evolving identity, which cannot be reduced to any one thing. (Malik, 1996: 213) This new composite identity is also seen in the stage musical, which shows that the identity itself is multiple, fluid and relational, but not without conflict. Ultimately, Jess/​Jesminder finds her freedom by leaving home, as she herself migrates to another country to achieve her dream, but takes the ‘homeland’ of Britain with her, along with her identity of being both British and Asian.

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The musical opened in May 2015 after an extended preview period, but closed in March 2016, less than a year later. It was a very difficult climate in which to launch a new British musical in the West End, as was demonstrated with another new musical, Made In Dagenham, also closing early, and the long-​running Billy Elliott leaving the West End that year. Another possible reason that it did not run longer was due to a lack of clarity in the production and marketing as to who the intended audience were. Unlike with Rifco, who are making work purposefully for their target audience, it was not clear if the musical was aimed more at an Asian or non-​ Asian audience, and this created confusion in the publicity and style of the show. One younger British South Asian audience member informed me, ‘I didn’t feel that it was made for me’, indicating that she did not relate to the way in which she felt the show represented her community. Bombay Dreams had been able to create large South Asian audiences through the unashamed exoticising of India and Bollywood, whereas Beckham struggled in finding a stage musical language that could attract those audiences to see representations of London in the new millennium. Though the musical was produced in London’s West End in 2015, and showed the difference in representation of South Asians on a mainstream stage in comparison to those in Chapter 3 in having the confidence to portray the South Asian community in Britain rather than in an exoticised India, there is a sense of an idealised conviviality of multiculturalism that is perhaps at odds with the current state of the nation. Producer Sonia Friedman speaks of why she feels the musical is relevant to Britain today: For me, it speaks to where we are here in the UK right now. The history of these islands is of diverse communities coming to settle here, seeking a better life for themselves and their children and in doing so enriching the tapestry that we like to call Society. So it is a tale of hope and making dreams come true. […] We are fast approaching a General Election [2015], a time when the nation asks itself who are we and what do we want from ourselves? What is our identity? Bend It Like Beckham is an unashamed celebration of what it is to be British, of diversity and difference and the richness and potential of all being on the same team, kicking the same ball and having the same goals! (Friedman, 2015) As it turned out, the General Election in 2015 showed great divisions in British society, and led to the referendum that resulted in the vote to leave the EU by a small majority, with the feeling of anything but the whole country ‘being on the same team’. The film of Beckham was made in the golden summer of 2001 a few short months before 9/​11 changed the world, and seeing the musical set in that same summer makes its portrayal as a ‘tale of hope’ one that also brings into harsh reality the evolutions in British society that have occurred since. While the musical reflects changes to representation and identities, and uses the sound of British Bhangra to present composite identities of being both British and Asian, it also shows that the conflicts and prejudices that the first generation of migrant settlers

Bending Bhangra  165

encountered in the 1950s and 1960s have not disappeared, though they may have been transformed into a different cultural expression today. What is unequivocal in the productions discussed in this book is that, in the same way as in the development of British Bhangra, they are a ‘cultural form shaped by migration and diaspora’ (Hyder, 2004:  70). The inclusion of Bollywood and Bhangra has been a means to create popular performance seen on mainstream stages that offers a range of representations of British South Asian communities to themselves and others. The markers of identity create portrayals of South Asians that in some ways may conform to preconceptions shaped by previous representations, and yet also have the ability to be a subversive intervention into the dominant discourse and ideology usually seen in mainstream British theatre. The experience of being part of a diaspora, having composite identities that negotiate transnational movements of culture, can create new forms of performance that reflect the changing landscape of not just British theatre, but also of Britain and what it means to be British.

Notes 1 Much of the background history of the company is taken from Graham Ley’s chapter on Rifco (Ley, 2011a), and the interview Pravesh Kumar conducted with Ley in 2008. Further information is from Rifco’s archive, and other sources. 2 Quotations from the production are taken from a recording of a performance provided by Rifco. 3 Quotations from the production are taken from the video of a performance at the Watford Palace Theatre, available in the Rifco archives. 4 Quotations from the production, including song lyrics without a citation, are taken from notes made when viewing the performance five times from preview shows through to the final week.

CONCLUSION

The theatre productions examined in this book have offered the potential for considering the multiple and changing ways in which the South Asian diaspora communities in Britain have been represented in a selection of mainstream theatre spaces through the popular forms of Bollywood and Bhangra, and how these forms have been adapted in the theatre productions. The nature of diaspora as a space that negotiates not only being between ‘homeland’ and ‘home’, but also other transnational flows and influences, demonstrates why a study of this nature is significant in considering contemporary issues of identification and representation in Britain. The very materiality of the productions means that there is an engagement with these issues in a way that moves beyond a theoretical imagining of the ‘third space’ that sits between two nations, into a place that embodies and negotiates the complex transnational flows and intersections that are the nature of diaspora. As Ley points out: [w]‌e cannot doubt theory’s ability to encompass a large range of related phenomena […]. But that same inductive strength of theory can prove to be an obstacle in tracking and understanding the material circumstances of any given cultural activity that was not mapped at the start. (Ley, 2011b: 217) Thus, the performances are productions of materiality and material circumstances that offer the means to examine, contest and form theory with regard to diaspora, and have led to the re-​thinking of terminology that was discussed in Chapter 2. Notions of identity and community are seen to be multiple, in flux and relational, and the changes that have taken place since the first generation of migrants through to the younger generations of today are reflected in new forms of cultural production and performance.

Conclusion  167

This also engages with changing identifications of what it means to be ‘British’. Gurinder Chadha’s first short film, made in 1990, charted the developments in British Bhangra in Southall, particularly with the then second generation of young musicians creating a new sound of Bhangra through DJs mixing the traditional music with other forms. The documentary film was called I’m British, But …, and showed the second generation negotiating their own sense of identity and culture clash in a country that was still far away from the conviviality of ‘Asian Kool’. Perhaps, in 2017, it is possible to consider that the title could now be I’m British, And …, to acknowledge that the younger generations today are in a different position where identification can happen in a fluid, intersectional and transnational way that draws on different cultures and forms more freely in a globalised world which is available and interconnected through the Internet and digital media. The productions discussed also show multivalent readings and meanings through the use of Bollywood and Bhangra in creating performances that are ‘popular’, and designed to attract audiences to entertain. They may certainly also address social issues, but the framing through the forms and aesthetics of Bollywood and Bhangra can result in a self-​exoticising of ‘Indian-​ness’ that can lead to an uncontroversial and enjoyable show that presents South Asians in a space of multicultural conviviality. These productions are valuable in drawing in audiences who might not otherwise go to the theatre, but also can belie the reality of the problems of exclusion and prejudice that can be found in Britain today. Issues of diversity within theatre are still being debated and acknowledged as a ‘problem’, and I have written about this lack of diversity and representation still seen as being perceived as a ‘problem’ in British theatre in the twenty-​first century (Daboo, 2017). It is very important to stress at the end, as I did at the beginning, that the productions discussed are only part of a wealth of the range of forms of performance and approaches to transadaptation that have been made by British South Asian theatre practitioners and companies over the past 40 years. These different approaches have led to the creation of a highly successful theatre movement through carefully considered strategies that have contributed to the increased visible representation of the communities in mainstream theatre spaces. The focus on the use of Bollywood and Bhangra has been a means to examine how these popular forms have been used to great effect in creating new types of productions, and in developing new audiences. This does also create the dilemma articulated throughout the book that, while these productions have appealed to a diverse audience, including non-​Asians and more recently migrated Asians, the use of the popular to draw in these audiences can lead to representations that might conform to traditional and conservative views of the communities, rather than challenging them. However, the very visibility of the productions, actors, playwrights and directors on mainstream stages is a definite intervention into the usual dominance of ‘whiteness’ in such spaces, and the contradictory discourse that this produces has been a key aspect of the analysis of the productions in the book. I would like to consider that the Conclusion to this book is also looking forward, rather than just looking back. It is interesting to see that there has been an

168 Conclusion

increasing number of productions by younger British South Asian theatre-​makers who are not engaging with Bollywood and Bhangra, and creating works of popular entertainment, but instead exploring contemporary issues in their own lives through theatre. Although there have clearly been many such different approaches over the past 40 years, it is interesting to consider whether the work made by the younger generation of theatre-​makers is indicating a difference in future themes and forms. Some of these productions have been one-​person shows, partly due to the reduced cost of putting these on and touring them. Productions such as Ambreen Razia’s Diary of a Hounslow Girl (2016), Hassan Abdulrazzak’s Love, Bombs and Apples (2016) or Hassan Mahamdallie’s The Crows Plucked Your Sinews (2016) use verbatim and personal story to offer innovative and provocative interrogations into what it means to be a young British South Asian today. Joe Sellman-​Leava’s one-​person show Labels, produced by Worklight Theatre, premiered in 2015, and has since toured around the world to great acclaim. Sellman-​Leava tells the story of his family, charting his South Asian father’s migration from Uganda to the UK and the prejudice that he encountered, through to marrying his English wife and having Joe and his siblings.This story is set alongside Sellman-​Leava performing lines from figures such as Enoch Powell, David Cameron and Katie Hopkins to show the types of language and labels that have been imposed on migrants and their children. To physicalise this, he sticks written labels on his body throughout the performance, seen in Figure C.1. The performance ends with an explanation that ‘Sellman-​Leava’ was the surname that the family created for themselves to form their own unique label of identification. He notes that the kinds of prejudice that his father encountered, such as being told he did not ‘belong’ in Britain, are still being told to his son who was born and brought up in Britain: No one is immune to prejudice –​we all make pre-​judgements. An audience member spent half an hour telling me I  wasn’t English after they saw the show. This is someone who would describe themselves as ‘liberal and open-​ minded’, yet thinks of British citizens like me as ‘guests’ in the UK because of my heritage. (in The New Current, 2015) Sellman-​Leava uses these responses as a source for material in the production to show that the labels that his father fought against and countered by changing his name from ‘Patel’ in order to have a chance of getting a job, are still present today even if in different forms. However, the fact that Sellman-​Leava has had the opportunity to present the show so widely and successfully also demonstrates the changes that have taken place, and offer a glimmer of hope that this may bode well for further changes in the positioning of South Asian performers. This will partly depend on whether cultural institutions including theatres and funding organisations are able to relieve younger practitioners of the pressure of creating work that conforms to expectations imposed from outside, and instead encourage the development of

Conclusion  169

Sellman-​Leava in Labels. Source: Benjamin Borley, courtesy of Worklight Theatre. FIGURE C.1  Joe

new forms of representation of South Asians on stage. However, if members of the Sellman-​Leava family were able to reinvent themselves in order to find their voice in British society, then perhaps theatre can do so as well. This change is vital if theatre is to be relevant for South Asian audiences as, despite the efforts made to draw in such audiences over the past 40 years, a recent report by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport indicated that the proportion of Asian audiences is far fewer than those of white and African-​Caribbean communities (Masso, 2017). Responding to this, Jatinder Verma stated: This points to the effects of decades of a lack of equitable representation on the stage and media, as much as a disparaging perception of Asians generally in the ‘age of terror’. It presents some real challenges for venues, producers, funders, schools and philanthropists to make a concerted effort to draw attention to the centrality of arts in national life for everyone, not least Asians. […]

170 Conclusion

But in the increasingly strained funding climate, placing this burden exclusively on Asian arts organisations will not change the grim national picture. We all need to appreciate that your story is also mine. (in ibid.) In speaking on the changing representation of theatre and nation, Nadine Holdsworth states: Theatre has the potential not just to reflect what is happening in a nation at any given time but, via its discursive, imaginative and communal realm, to contribute to the creation through the cultural discourses it ignites, the representations it offers and the stories it chooses to tell. (Holdsworth, 2010: 80) The work of this new generation of South Asian theatre practitioners may indicate a different direction in the cultural discourse of the diaspora in the future. If companies such as Tara,Tamasha and Rifco were created by second-​generation artists trying to negotiate their experience of being between ‘homeland’ and ‘home’, with the resulting markers of identity of culture clash, inter-​generational conflict, arranged marriages and Bollywood and Bhangra, the subsequent generations and more recent younger migrant South Asians have different stories to tell, and other theatrical ways to tell them. Just as film in India is (and has been) reaching out beyond Bollywood to make other kinds of cinema, so too is (and has) British South Asian theatre. Indeed, perhaps this really is the time when the term will cease to be relevant, and the plays and productions made by South Asians will simply become part of British theatre, with no sub-​division needed. This might be as utopian an idea as Paul Gilroy’s notion of conviviality, but the shift in new practitioners wanting to move beyond what was there before and make productions that reflect their life in twenty-​first-​century Britain and what it means to be British today, offers a possibility for new roots and routes in theatre.

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Tara Arts archive material: Kanjoos programme (2012) Tara Arts website: www.tara-arts.com/ Taylor, M.​(2012) Musical Theatre, Realism and Entertainment, Farnham: Ashgate Thatra, G. (2016) ‘Contentious (Socio-Spatial) Relations: taiwafs and congress house in contemporary Bombay/Mumbai’, in Indian Journal of Gender Studies,Vol 23, No 2, pp 191–​217 The New Current (2015) Interview with Joe Sellman-Leava, www.thenewcurrent.co.uk/ edinburgh-fringe-2015-joe-sellman-leava [16 April 2017] Thomas, R. (2008) ‘Indian Cinema: pleasures and popularity’, in Dudrah, R. and Desai, J. (ed.) The Bollywood Reader, Maidenhead: Open University Press, pp 21–​31 Thompson, T. (2003) ‘Revealed:  Bollywood craze that is fuelling London’s vice rackets’, in The Guardian, 27 July 2003, www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jul/27/race.ukcrime [17 April 2016] Tolia-Kelly, D. (2004) ‘Locating Processes of Identification: studying the precipitates of the re-memory through artefacts in the British Asian home’, in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series,Vol 29, No 3, September, pp 314–​329 Varoufakis, Y. (2016) ‘Becoming Popular By Opposing Populism’, The Guardian, 20 December 2016, accessed at www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2016/12/20/becoming-popularby-opposing-populism-a-progressives-task-the-guardian/ [23 March 2016] Verma, D., Bhuchar, S. and Cross, F. (2009) Wuthering Heights, London: Methuen Verma, J. (2017) Interview with Jerri Daboo, 17 March 2017 —​—​(2013) Interview on Curly Radio, February 2013, on Tara Arts website Virk, H. (2013a) Feedback Memo, in Tara Arts archives, 5 January 2013 —​—​(2013b) Marketing PR and Audience Development Campaign, p 1, in Tara Archives Walker, M. (2010) ‘Courtesans and Choreographers:  the (re)placement of women in the history of kathak dance’, in Chakravorty, P. and Gupta, N. (ed.) Dance Matters: performing India, London: Routledge, pp 279–​300 Werbner, P. (2013) ‘Ritual, Religion and Aesthetics in the Pakistani and South Asian Diaspora’, in Chatterji, J. and Washbrook, D. (ed.) Routledge Handbook of South Asian Diaspora, Oxford, London: Routledge, pp 318–​329 —​—​(2012) ‘Migration and Culture’, in Rosenblum, M. and Tichenor, D. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of International Migration, Oxford:  Oxford University Press, pp 215–​243, online version —​—​(2004) ‘Theorising Complex Diasporas: purity and hybridity in the South Asian public sphere in Britain’, in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies,Vol 30 No 5, pp 895–​911 Werbner, P. and Fumanti, M. (2013) ‘The Aesthetics of Diaspora: ownership and appropriation’, Ethnos,Vol 78, No 2, pp 149–​174 Williams, S. (2015) Interview with Jerri Daboo, 15 August 2015

FILMIOGRAPHY

Asha (1957), directed by M. V. Raman Awaara (1951), directed by Raj Kapoor Bend It Like Beckham (2002), directed by Gurinder Chadha Devdas (2002), directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali Dil Diya Dard Liya (1966), directed by Abdul Rashid Kardar Dil Se (1998), directed by Mani Ratnam Hum Aapke Hain Koun …!, (1994), directed by Sooraj R. Barjatya Monsoon Wedding (2001), directed by Mira Nair Mudhalvan (1999), directed by S. Shankar Mughal-E-Azam (1950), directed by K. Asif Nayak: The Real Hero (2001), directed by S. Shankar Pakeezah (1972), directed by Kamal Amrohi Sholay (1975), directed by Ramesh Sippy Slumdog Millionaire (2008), directed by Danny Boyle Umrao Jaan (1981), directed by Muzaffar Ali

INDEX

7/​7 3, 91 9/​11 3, 62, 91 adaptation, theatrical process of 43–​5 Adorno, Theodor 68 affect 20, 22 Ahmad, Fauzia 60, 62, 63 Ahmad, Rukhsana 12, 51 Alaap (Bhangra group) 25, 27–​8, 29, 146, 149 Alam, Sohini 95, 118 Alam Alra (film) 20 Alexander, Claire 46, 60, 61, 62 ambivalence 47–​8, 59, 101 Anokha Club Night 30 arranged marriage as plotline 10, 14, 60, 62, 73, 81, 94 see also The Deranged Marriage Arthanayake, Nihal 37, 128 Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) 13, 14, 15 Arts Council 6, 70 ‘Asian’ as term 5, 6, 32, 36, 37 ‘Asian Kool’ 3, 70–​2, 80 ‘assimilation’ 61, 144 Aunty figure, stereotype of 10, 11, 78, 141, 144, 148 Auslander, Philip 68, 69, 122 ‘authenticity’: and Bhangra 157, 161; ‘Bollywoodisation’ and 94; and ‘Cool Britannia’ 71; hybrid 48; nostalgia for 63, 112, 146–​148; and representation 50, 52; settings and 155; and tradition 9, 29, 41–​43

Bancil, Parv: Bollywood or Bust, Innit 57–​58; Made In England 71; on new writing 56, 93; Papa Was a Bus Conductor 57; on transadaptation 102 Bangladesh, independence of 37 Barjatya, Sooraj 72 Battle of Bollywood 123 Baumann, Gerd 50 Beaster-​Jones, J. 66, 83, 85–​6 Behzti 91, 115 Bells (Kali Theatre) 114 Bend It Like Beckham (film) 75 Bend It Like Beckham: the musical 152, 153–​65; ‘home’ in 41; identity crisis in 63; locality 127, 148; music 88; period of 3, 4, 17; Sikhism 130–​1; wedding party scene 45 Berges, Paul Mayeda 157 Bhabha, Homi 37–​9, 46–​8, 53, 101–​2 Bhaji On the Beach (film) 163 Bhamra, Kuljit: background 15; and Bhangra 28, 140, 144, 157–​8, 161; on Indian weddings 44; ‘live’ music 69, 140; musical theatre 87–​8 Bhangra 4–​8, 25–​32; ‘Bollywoodisation’ 31, 74; and ‘Britishness’ 128–​132; instruments and costume 26, 27; and mainstream popular culture 32; ‘modern’ 29–​30; nostalgia 31, 147, 151; as ‘third space’ 127; transnational flow back to India 28 Bhanot, Kavita 144, 145 Bharatanatyam dance 24 Bhaskar, Sanjeev 55

Index  181

Bhatti, Gurpreet Kaur 91, 115, 135 Bhosle, Asha 20, 112 Bhuchar, Sudha 3, 67, 74, 76, 98 Bhuchar, Suman 78, 80, 87, 123 Billington, Michael 97, 102 Birmingham Rep 75, 87, 91, 115 Black, Don 82 Blair, Tony 2, 3, 11, 71 Bollywood 4–​8, 18–​24; and changing India 2; as global brand 24; historical epic films 98; and identification 5; influence on non-​Indian film 67, 68–​69, 70, 81; and pantomime 116–​122; reference to Hindi films 18; revue shows 122–​5; stereotypes 49, 50; as term 5; theatrical staging of 9; transnational popularity 24 Bollywood Carmen (BBC) 123 Bollywood 2000, remounted as Bollywood:Yet Another Love Story (Rifco Arts) 136–​9 ‘Bollywoodisation’: of Bhangra 31, 74; of European texts 45, 91, 92–​102; of plays 88, 90–​1, 103–​16; of pantomimes 117–​22, 125 Bombay Dreams 81–​8; adaptation 45, 65; budget large 87; ‘Cool Britannia’ 70; ‘Indian Summer’ 3; lip-​syncing and live singing 69; literature on 13; music 87, 88 Boyle, Danny 103, 153 Brah, Avtar 39, 46, 60, 61, 62, 127 ‘BrAsian’ 37, 62 Brick Lane, East London 37 Britain’s Got Bhangra (Rifco Arts) 63, 64, 127, 130, 131, 146–​52 Britain’s Got Talent (ITV) 32 British musical theatre, origins of 69 Brontë, Emily, Wuthering Heights 97, 98, 100–​1 Bunsee, Antony 97, 118 Cameron, David 3 censorship 21 Chadha, Gurinder 17, 81, 152, 153, 155, 157, 163, 167; I’m British, But … 167; see also Bend It Like Beckham (film) and Bend It Like Beckham: the musical Chaggar, Gurdip Singh 35, 70 Chakravarthi, Dr Uma 108 Chandru 99 Chaudhry, Shanawar 34 Chavda, Mrunal 13, 95 Chhabra, Ajay 135 Chopra, Sumeet 149 Collins, Aletta 157, 161 colonialism: and ambivalence 48; censorship 21; and identity 33, 62, 63; ‘otherness’

101; stereotypes 60; and women 62, 93, 108 commodification of Asian culture 72, 80, 81, 82, 88 ‘conviviality’ 58–​60 ‘Cool Britannia’ 70, 71, 82 Cornershop (band) 129 Cross, Felix 66, 99 ‘cultural adaptation’ 43, 45 culture clash: diasporic communities and 30, 61–​3, 81, 127, 128; modernity and tradition 69–​70, 92, 109, 110, 112, 114, 141, 154, 167 Daboo, Jerri 13, 15, 51, 83, 87, 167 Dance With Alaap (album) 28 Daytimer concerts 29 De, Shobhaa 89n1 The Deranged Marriage (Rifco Arts) 41–​2, 120, 130, 139–​45 Derrida, Jacques 48 Desai, Poulomi 55 Devdas (film) 81, 107, 112 Dhand, Pardeep 161 Dhondy, Danyal 117 Dhondy, Farrokh 117, 118, 120 diasporic communities: ‘home’ 10, 23, 26, 34, 39–​45, 68, 91, 138, 140–​1, 148, 151, 160, 163; ‘homeland’ 23, 24, 26, 28, 35, 39–​43, 46, 63, 68, 91, 94, 97, 108, 112, 113, 137, 138, 141, 147, 148, 151, 155, 159; importance of cinema to 35–​6 Dil Diya Dard Liya (film) 97 Dil Se (film) 45, 83, 84 Dixit, Madhuri 72, 80, 107, 112, 141 Dominion cinema, Southall 35, 36 Dyer, Richard 49 East African Asians 27, 35, 36, 37, 58 East India Company 62 Ebrahim,Vincent 102 ‘elitist’ theatre 7–​8 ‘Ethno-​Trance’ 30 European nationalism 91 ‘family films’ 3, 10, 21, 73 Fatania, Rina 110, 116; It Ain’t All Bollywood 152 feminism 38, 39, 115 film songs (filmis) 20, 27, 137, 140 Four Weddings and a Funeral (film) 75 Fourteen Songs,Two Weddings and a Funeral (Tamasha Theatre Company) 45, 69, 70, 72–​81, 83, 87, 132, 135 Friedman, Sonia 157, 164

182 Index

Gandhi, Mahatma 95 Gardner, Lyn 142 gender roles 3, 117 Ghosh, Arun 143, 144 Gill, Ravinder 55 Gilroy, Paul 39, 58; After Empire 59–​60 ‘Global Dance Fusion’ 30 global economic crisis 91 globalisation 18, 38, 71, 82, 91, 107, 109 ‘golden age’ of Indian cinema 64 Goodall, Howard 88, 157 Goodness Gracious Me (BBC) 52–​3, 55, 56, 58, 81 Gopinath, Gayatri 73, 74, 79 Great Indian Dancers 26, 27 Gupta, Tanika 6, 65, 66, 103, 109, 113 HAC (Hounslow Arts Cooperative) 55, 56, 57, 91 Hall, Stuart 39, 46, 49, 54, 55, 59 Hart, Charles 131, 157, 160 Heathrow Airport 34 Hindi cinema 20–​2, 31, 36, 73, 94, 95 Honey’s Dance Academy 24, 72 ‘Hourglass Model’ of intercultural theatre 124, 125 Hum Aapke Hain Koun …! (Who Am I To You) (HAHK) (film) 3, 72–​4, 75, 81, 132 humour 52–​60; cultural hybridity 53; racial stereotypes and 10–​11, 53 Hutcheon, Linda 92 hybridity 39, 47–​8, 101–​2, 163; cultural 53, 61, 70, 116–​17 Hytner, Nicholas 65 identity 37–​8; markers of 60–​4, 69, 92, 97, 109, 123, 165 imperialism 33, 35, 37, 125 India: conservatism 72; economic liberalisation 2, 3, 71, 72; emigration 33, 34; films and older generation 42; as ‘homeland’ 23, 24, 26, 28, 35, 39–​43, 46, 63, 68, 91, 94, 97, 108, 112, 113, 137, 138, 141, 147, 148, 151, 155, 159; history 19; Partition 33, 34 see also ‘New India’ ‘Indian Summer’ 3, 82 Indology 38 inter-​generational conflict 29–​30, 43–​4, 61–​3, 154 intersectionality 10, 46, 127, 130, 167 Islam 104, 106, 114, 115 Islamophobia 3, 91, 114 IWA (Indian Workers Association) 35

Jain, Ravi 34, 35 jat or farming communities 26, 147, 148 Jayetileke, Natasha 37, 109, 159 ‘juke-​box musicals’ 68 Kali Theatre 13, 114, 115 Kalia, Balbir 26 Kalirai, Harmage Singh 57 Kanjoos (Tara Arts) 17, 45, 94, 96–​7, 98, 102, 118 Kapoor, Ruhan 44 Kapur, Anuradha 4 Kapur, Shekhar 82 Kardar, Abdul Rashid 97 Kathak dance 24, 105–​6, 110–​13 Khalnayak (film) 112 Khan, Farah 82 Khan, Mehboob 21 Khan, Naseem 70 Khan, Sadiq 118 Khan, Shahid Abbas 158 Khan-​Din, Ayub: East is East 63; Rafta, Rafta … 9, 65, 66 Khazanchi, Deepak 27, 28, 30 Kilpatrick, Caroline 118 Kneehigh theatre company 6, 65, 103, 109, 110 Kohli, Hardeep Singh 94–​6, 117 Krishnamurthy, Kavita 113 Kumar, Dilip 97 Kumar, Pravesh 132; Bollywood 2000 57; Britain’s Got Bhangra 146–​52; The Deranged Marriage 129, 139–​45; Fourteen Songs,Two Weddings and a Funeral 75, 76, 79; Wah! Wah! Girls 103 The Kumars at Number 42 (BBC) 52, 56 Kureishi, Hanif 114 Lacan, Jacques 48 Lagaan (film) 81 Landon-​Smith, Kristine 3, 67, 74, 76, 77, 78, 98–​100 Ley, Graham 11–​12, 14–​15, 43, 55, 57, 134–​5, 139–​40, 166 lip-​syncing 69, 84, 95, 98, 118, 140 Lloyd Webber, Andrew 3, 81, 82–​3, 87 London Olympics opening ceremony 103, 153 Luhrmann, Baz 81 Maan, Shakila 36 mainstream theatre, ‘whiteness’ of 5, 12, 33, 51–​2, 54–​6, 81–​2, 152 male gaze 106, 109, 116

Index  183

Malik, Sarita 49, 52–​4, 56, 58, 59–​60, 153, 154, 163 Marathi theatre 134, 135 ‘masala’ films 20, 21, 73, 95, 137 Massey, Jamila 54, 55 May, Claudia 154 Mayes, Sue 67 McCarthy, Shaun 76 mediatisation 68, 69 melodrama: Bollywood 19, 50, 54, 57, 77, 83, 109; British 19, 69; Hindi cinema 23, 24 The Merchants of Bollywood 122 Mind Your Language (ITV) 54 Mirza, Suleman 32 mixing of musical forms, transnational 30 ‘modern girl’ 10, 21, 72, 112 modernity 22–​3 Mohanty, Chandra 38, 39, 115 Molière: The Miser 45, 94; Tartuffe  93, 94 Monsoon Wedding (film) 81 Morcom, Anna 23, 107 Morrison, Toni, Beloved 40 Mother India (film) 21 Moti Roti, Putti Chunni 134 Moulin Rouge! (film) 81 Mudhalvan (later remade as Nayak:The Real Hero) (film) 84 mujra, history in theatre productions 10, 17, 103–​6, 108–​14, 116 Mukherjee, Sheema 99 multiculturalism 3, 11, 71 Mulvey, Laura 106 Nagra, Parminder 75, 76, 78 Naidu,Vayu 51, 66, 67, 88 Nair, Mira 81 Nargis 21 National Association of Asian Youth 35 National Front 35 National Theatre 9, 65, 66, 70, 93 Naughton, Bill, All In Good Time 65 neo-​liberalism 8, 23, 107–​8 ‘Neti-​neti’ 66, 88, 92 ‘New India’ 2, 71, 72–​4, 80, 82, 95, 138 New Labour 2, 3, 70 non-​Asian audiences 45, 59, 72, 83, 88, 96, 142 nostalgia 64, 80, 82, 95, 106, 117 Not Just An Asian Babe (Mehtab Theatre) 114 NRI (Non-​Resident Indian) communities 2, 3, 24, 73, 81, 122

One Nation Under a Groove 55, 56, 57 orientalism 33, 38, 48, 62, 101 ‘otherness’: and arranged marriage 62; and conviviality 11, 59–​60; ethnic theatres as 12; and hybridity 47, 100–​1; representation of 33, 49–​50, 55; and separateness 127–​8 Pakeezah (film) 10, 57, 106 Pakistan, creation of 34 pantomime 69, 116; ‘Bollywoodisation’ of 117–​22, 125 Pavis, Patrice 124, 125 Peach, Blair 35, 146, 155 Phalke, Dhundiraj Govind 19 Pimlott, Steven 82 Pinto, Richard 52 populist theatre 7–​8 postcolonial theory 38–​9 postcolonialism: Eurocentrism 93; and gender 21; and hybridity 47–​8; ‘third space’ 23, 46, 53, 66, 92; in Wuthering Heights 100–​1 psychoanalysis 48 Punjab: British Bhangra 45, 126–​65; comedy 52, 58; Dick Whittington Goes Bollywood 118; emigration after partition 34; origin of Bhangra 5, 6, 25–​32; Sufi music 84 Punjab Dancers 26, 27 Punjab Gazetteer 25 Purwar, Nirmal 71 race: racism 33–​5, 53–​5, 57, 59, 60, 61, 91, 103, 130, 146, 160; ‘racialised’ representations 22, 49, 54, 56, 57, 61, 100–​2, 127 Radcliffe, Caroline 117 Rafta, Rafta 9, 65, 66 Rahman, A. R. 81, 82, 83, 85–​7 Rai, Hardial 55 Raja Harishchandra (film) 19 Rajadhyaksha, Ashish 93, 94 Ramayana 87 rasa 19, 22, 32n4 referenda (Scottish independence and EU) 3, 164 regional ‘folk’ groups, India 26 Rehman, Waheeda 97 Rekha 112 re-​memory: and familiarity 45, 77–​80, 83–​4, 95, 103, 116, 122, 131; and ‘homeland’ 40–​2, 64, 68, 127, 147, 155; and modernity 107, 108 representation 49–​51, 52

184 Index

Republic Day celebration, New Delhi 26 revue-​type shows 122–​5 Rice, Emma 103, 109 Rich, Rishi 30, 31 Rifco Arts 6, 14, 57, 132–​9; Airport 135, 136 see also ‘Bollywood 2000’; ‘Britain’s Got Bhangra’; ‘The Deranged Marriage’ Rushdie, Salman 40 Sadler’s Wells 6, 103, 123 Sagoo, Bally 30 Said, Edward 33, 48, 101 Sanadi, Javed 110 Sangeet Natak 19, 135 Sardana, Sharat 52 Sawhney, Rekha 158, 159 secularism 21, 41, 130, 156 Sekhon, Parminder 114, 115 Sellman-​Leava, Joe, Labels 168–​169 sexualisation of women 21, 107–​108 Sharma, Amitabh 71, 72 Signature (dance group) 32 Sikhism 26, 31, 115, 129–​30, 148, 155–​6 Singh, Channi 27, 28, 29 Singh, Harbinder 26 Singh, Jarnail 26 Singh, Madhu 32 Singh, Mangal 45 Singh, Tajinder 129 Slumdog Millionaire (film) 86, 103, 120 song and dance sequences 21, 22–​3 Southall, diasporic centre 34–​5 The Southall Story project 15, 16 Sri Lanka, emigration from 37 Steele, Janet 115, 124 stereotypes: Aunty figure 10, 11, 78, 141, 144, 148; and Bollywood 57, 123; conformity to 63; conventions 22; and humour 10–​11, 53; ‘otherness’ 49; postcolonial discourse 60; subversion of 55, 56 Sufi music 84 Syal, Meera 55, 82 talkies, introduction of 20 Tamasha Theatre Company 3, 6, 13, 63, 67, 80; Wuthering Heights 45, 93, 94 see also Fourteen Songs, Two Weddings and a Funeral

Tandoori Nights 54 Tara Arts 6–​7, 12–​13, 35, 67, 70, 93, 116–​17; Bollywood Cinderella 117; Bollywood Jack 118–​21; Dick Whittington Goes Bollywood 117, 118, 119; Kanjoos 45, 94–​97 Tawaif (courtesan)  104–​8 Thatcher, Margaret 70 Theatre Royal Stratford East 6, 103, 136, 142 ‘third space’ 23, 46, 53, 66, 92 TKC (Tandoori Kebab Centre) restaurant 34 tokenism 50, 51 ‘tradaptation’ 93 transadaptation: as process 49, 69, 74, 75, 76, 78, 92–​102, 116, 122, 127, 152; as term 17, 67, 123–​5 Tripathi, Gauri Shamra 110 Umrao Jaan (film) 10, 98, 106, 109, 112 Vaisakhi (Baisakhi), festival of 25, 26 Van Laast, Anthony 82 Varoufakis,Yanis 7 Verma, Deepak 101–​2 Verma, Jatinder 7–​8, 43, 50, 67, 70, 90, 93–​8, 116–​17, 123, 169, 170 Virdi, Harvey 117, 135, 152 Virk, Hardish 9, 87, 96 Wah! Wah! Girls 6, 65, 103–​16; mujra in 10, 17, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108–​109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 116 Watermans Arts Centre, Brentford 12, 55, 135, 136, 137 wedding ceremonies, diasporic 44 wedding scenes: arranged marriage and 10; Bhangra and 31, 45, 74, 158, 161–​3; The Deranged Marriage 41, 42, 139–​44; Monsoon Wedding 81; subversion of 131 Whittaker Khan,Yasmin 114 Williams, Shelby 157, 160, 161, 162, 163 women: arranged marriages 62; Bend It Like Beckham: the musical 152, 153–​65; colonialism 62, 93, 108; gender roles 3, 117; Punjabi 130–​1; representation of 10, 21; sexualisation 21, 107–​8