Parsi theatre

Parsi theatre is a generic term for an influential theatre tradition, staged by Parsis, and theatre companies largely-owned by the Parsi business community, which flourished between 1850 and the 1930s.[1] Plays were primarily in the Hindustani language (especially the Urdu dialect), as well as Gujarati to an extent. After its beginning in Bombay, it soon developed into various travelling theatre companies, which toured across India, especially north and western India (now Gujarat and Maharashtra), popularizing proscenium-style theatre in regional languages.[2]

Entertainment-driven and incorporating musical theatre and folk theatre, in the early 1900s, some Parsi theatre producers switched to new media like bioscope and subsequently many became film producers. The theatre diminished in popularity, with the arrival of the talkies era in Hindi cinema in the 1930s. Post-independence, it experienced a revival in the 1950s, much like theatre in the rest of India.[3][4]

Raghubir Yadav singing Parsi Theatre Style, Laila-Majanu song
  1. ^ K, A (2004). Lal, Ananda (ed.). The Oxford companion to Indian theatre. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199861248. OCLC 607157336 – via Oxford Reference.
  2. ^ Nicholson, Rashna Darius (2021). The Colonial Public and the Parsi Stage: The Making of the Theatre of Empire (1853-1893). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 1–2. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-65836-6. ISBN 978-3-030-65835-9. S2CID 234113680.
  3. ^ Kasbekar 2006, p. 50.
  4. ^ Dalmia 2004, p. 60.