Hanne M. de Bruin is Programme Director and co-founder of Kattaikkuttu Sangam, a center for performing arts in Tamil Nadu, India, where Kattaikkuttu is performed and artists are trained in its traditions. From 2016-2018 she was a Fellow at the International Research Center for Interweaving of Performance Cultures, Berlin, and in 2019, 2020 and 2023 a guest-lecturer at Ashoka University, India. Her previous publications include Kattaikkuttu: Flexibility of a South Indian Theatre Tradition (1999), Karna Moksham or Karna’s Death (English translation of an Kattaikkuttu play, 1998) and the co-edited volume Between Fame and Shame (2011).
This is an extraordinary introduction to an invisibilized theatre tradition. De Bruin skillfully highlights the complex social history, spectacular technique and cultural politics around the Tamil kuttu theatre. This book marks an immense contribution to the study of subaltern theatres from South Asia by one of the most significant scholars on the subject. Few studies of Indian theatre glide so seamlessly between theoretical propositions and the affective and material dimensions of practice. This book is bound to become a classic for the study of theatre in modern South Asia. * Davesh Soneji, University of Pennsylvania, USA *