Lecture: "Safdar Hashmi: Marxist/Martyr"
128 Hope St., 12 -1 pm
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009Wednesday, October 28 at 12:00PM
Anthropology Department, Room 212, Giddings House, 128 Hope Street.
Shayoni Mitra, a visiting assistant professor in Brown's Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, will give a presentation on the life and work of street theater activist Safdar Hashmi.
Mitra comes to this topic as a scholar and actor, having performed with Jana Natya Manch, the group Hashmi started, from 2000-2003. In the years since she has been returning to Delhi each year to further her research and continue her collaborations with the theater community there.
Her focus will be on the thorny contradictions thrown up by his highly publicized murder by assault during a performance in Delhi, and the relative anonymity of large parts of his own creative oeuvre. Gifted writer, playwright, lyricist, artist, actor, singer, director, Hashmi was committed to and informed by Left ideology in every instance of his work. Yet his death has moved far beyond the realm of electoral party politics to become a symbol for the very freedom of creative expression in contemporary South Asia.
Visuals and footage from Hashmi's funeral and Lalit Vachani's film "Natak Jari Hai" (The Play Goes On, 2006) will be used.
This event is part of the Brown Faculty India Presentations sponsored by the Year of India.
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