Staging British South Asian Culture

Bollywood and Bhangra in British Theatre

Jerri Daboo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317196112
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literatura
• Subtopic: Arte dramático

Staging British South Asian Culture: Bollywood and Bhangra in British Theatre looks afresh at the popularity of forms and aesthetics from Bollywood films and bhangra music and dance on the British stage.

From Andrew Lloyd Webber's Bombay Dreams to the finals of Britain's Got Talent, Jerri Daboo reconsiders the centrality of Bollywood and bhangra to theatre made for or about British South Asian communities. Addressing rarely discussed theatre companies such as Rifco, 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.

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.

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.

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)

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, 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. 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 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 ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Bollywood, Bhangra and being British
• 2 Mapping migration: Transnational formations of diaspora
• 3 Bollywood and/as musical theatre
• 4 Bollywood on stage: Transadaptation and ‘Bollywoodisation’
• 5 Bending Bhangra: Rifco Arts and Bend It Like Beckham: the musical
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Filmiography
• Index