Fire and Life: Shared Realities, Shared Experiences

Speakers: Chaitanya Sambrani, Surendran Nair, N. Pushpamala, Jon Cattapan, and David Kreckler

October 18, 1996 | 6.30 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

The discussion will include thoughts on the experience of working together in the context of the ‘Fire and Life Project’ and other international projects and to address certain issues that are thrown up by such a collaboration. An important issue is whether the frame of the ‘nation’ can continue to provide sufficiently fertile ground for a creative and critical practice.

That the discourse of the nation-state has been an important defining format for cultural expression across disciplines especially in a post-colonial context is by now evident. What is equally important is that this discourse has also generated its fictions in terms of identity, a situation which the contemporary practitioner is likely to find problematic and even constricting. Especially on the background of increasing interest and activity in new alignments internationally, these questions brook discussion.