DEPARTMENT OF PERFORMING ARTS

PRESIDENCY UNIVERSITY, KOLKATA

M. A. in Performing Arts
SYLLABUS
with

COURSE CREDIT DISTRIBUTION

(As per latest revision 2021)

MA in Performing Arts
Course structure with Credit distribution

Semester 1

Sl Paper Paper Name Type Credit Total

No Code Credit
1 0701 Mapping and Identification of Indian Major 4
Performing Arts

2 0702 Concepts and Theories in a Comparative Major 4

Framework (Part 1)

3 0703 Introduction to World Performing Arts Major 4

4 0791 Performance Studies Sessional 8

20

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 Semester 2

Sl Paper Paper Name Type Credit Total

No Code Credit
1 0801 Concepts and Theories in a Comparative Major 4
Framework (Part 2)

2 0802 Cultural History of Indian Performing Arts – Pre Major 4

-modern Society

3 0803 Cultural History of Indian Performing Arts – Major 4

Medieval Society

4 0891 Living Traditions / Eastern and North Eastern Sessional 8

Indian Performing Arts

20

Semester 3

Sl Paper Paper Name Type Credit Total

No Code Credit
1 0901 Cultural History of Indian Performing Arts – Major 4
Modern Society

2 0902 Writing Performance Major 4

3 0903 Major 4
Designing Performance

4 0991 Text and Performance: Adaptations and Sessional 4

Translations / Dance in India: Practice and
Theory / Sound and Music

5 0992 Dissertation Part 1 Dissertation 4

20

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 Semester 4

Sl Paper Paper Name Type Credit Total

No Code Credit
1 1001 Major 4
Theatre and Acting

2 1002 Major 4
Dance and Body in Society

3 1003 Indian Music Major 4

4 1091 Performing Arts Management/ Performance Sessional 4

Policy

5 1092 Dissertation Part 2 Dissertation 4

20

SYLLABUS

SEMESTER 1

Paper PFAR 0701: Major

Mapping and Identification of Indian Performing Arts

Beginning from the idea of an unbroken seamless continuum through theatre, music,
dance and a wide range of ritual practices, martial training, and narrative traditions—
before the colonial intervention—a geographical break-up for the whole of the country,
basically locating the forms in their sites, with a cataloguing of their features and
interconnections, as they appear now.

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 Paper PFAR 0702: Major

Concepts and Theories in a Comparative Framework (Part 1)

Natya Shasta and Poetics: comparisons and contrasts

1. Historical and Philosophical Backgrounds
2. Anukarana and Mimesis
3. Rasa and catharsis
4. Typology of Drama: Dasaroopakas and tragedy/comedy
5. Contexts and Audiences
6. Dynamics of Staging
7. Regionality and Transregionality in performing arts: a) vritti, marga, desi b)
South Indian
Concepts: Tinai and Meyppadu in Tolkappiam
Rise of Narrative Theatres
1. Narrative as Theatre
2. Staging of Narratives: a) Ramayanas and Mahabharatas b) Silappadikaram
and Dravidian Theatre c) The rise of Narrative Theatres the in China and
Japan

Religion and Performing Arts

1. Bhakti Theatres in India: Staging Freedom-New Aestheitics

2. Medieval European Theatre: Mysteries and Moralities
3. Buddhist Theatres in South East Asia
4. Dance and Music in Sufism

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 Paper PFAR 0703: Major

Introduction to World Performing Arts

A global overview of the major movements in the performing arts, highlighting in a

broad chronological perspective Greek and Roman Theatre; Medieval Christian
Rituals and Performance; the Miracles and Moralities; Commedia del’Arte;
Baroque and Romantic Music; British Theatre; Elizabethan, Jacobean, Restoration;
the French Theatre and dance in the seventeenth–eighteenth centuries; the ballet;
modernism, symbolism, surrealism, cubism, expressionism; the convergence of
visual and performance arts and the emergence of the cinema in Weimar Germany
and Soviet Union; the World Wars and the arts; convergences and experiments
through the performing arts; the new media; the Chinese Theatre; the Japanese
Theatre; the new dance: Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn, Doris
Humphrey, Mary Wigman, Pina Bausch, Martha Graham, Alwin Nikolais, Murray
Louis, Francois Delsarte, Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, Paul Taylor, Rudolph von Laban,
Loie Fuller, Jose Limon, Marie Rambert, Paul Taylor; the new music: classical
music of the 20th century: Chaude Debussy, Richard Strauss, Alban Berg, Arnold
Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Francis Poulenc, Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, Peter
Warlock, William Walton, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, Michael
Tippett, Leoš Janáček, Béla Bartók, Zóltan Kodály, Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergey
Prokofiev, Pierre Boulez, Kalheinz Stockhausen; jazz, blues, pop, rock and roll,
protest and country music;

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 Paper PFAR 0791: Sessional

An extension of the performing arts curricula, dating practically from the 1980s /
1990s, described by Richard Schechner, Professor at New York University’s
Department of Performance Studies (the first of its kind), as ‘the broad spectrum
approach,’ opening up beyond ‘its subgenres like theatre, dance, music, and
performance art’ to include ‘the performing arts, rituals, healing, sports, popular
entertainments, and performance in everyday life;’ address ‘the global marketplace;’
‘the use’ of performance in politics, medicine, religion, popular entertainments, and
ordinary face-to-face interactions;’ and allow for continuing interactions with
sociologists, social scientists, psychoanalysts, etc.

SEMESTER 2

Paper PFAR 0801: Major

Concepts and Theories in a Comparative Framework (Part 2)

1. Performance in a Historical Perspective

2. Style
3. Realism and Symbolism
4. Tragedy and Comedy
5. Gender
6. Marxism and Western Marxism; Marxism in the 21st Century (Lukacs,
Benjamin, Adorno, Gramsci)
7. Ritual
8. Theatre Anthropology (Grotowski, Barba)
9. Alienation (Brecht, Benjamin)
10. Interculturalism
11. Presence and Representation
12. Embodiment
13. Space and Time / Environmental Theatre
14. Multimedia performance

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 15. Kinaesthetics
16. Mask
17. Puppets and Marionettes
18. Habermas, Benjamin, Bourdieu, Badiou, Ranciere
19. Theatre as process—the work culture

Paper PFAR 0802: Major

Cultural History of Indian Performing Arts – Pre -modern Society

1.Beginnings of Performing Arts in Ancient India: Sources and Reconstructions

a) Archaeological Sites
b)Paintings, Sculpture and Architecture
c) Texts and Meta-texts
d)Rituals: Vedic/Folk/Tribal
2. Sites andTheatre:
a) Temples and shrines

b)Courts and Palaces

C) Everyday Spaces

3.Staging Epics:
1. Ramayana and Mahabharatha: Trans-regional Epics
2. Silappadikaram in Ritual and Performances: Dravidian Example
4. Sanskrit Drama: An Overview
a) Texts and Performances
b)Forms and Structures
c) Politics and Patronage

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 d)Regional and Trans-regional Dimensions: Marga/Desi
4. Dance, drama, music: Confluence in performing arts
a)Nritta-tala-Laya and the emergence of percussion to instruments
C) tandava and lasya
Shruti and stringed instruments
d)Nritta-Brittany, Abhinaya
e) Bhava and Raga

Paper PFAR 0803: Major

Cultural History of Indian Performing Arts – Medieval Society

1. Bhakti Performing Arts:

a) Rama Plays: Ramlilas

b) Krishna Plays: Krishna Lilas, Raslilas, Ankianat, Kirtan

c) Stories of Saints: Sannata, Doddata

2.Playing Gods and Heroes:

a)Manasa Mangals
b) Lei Heroba
c)Krishnattam

d) Chhau
e)Kathakkali

3.Indo-Islamic Dimensions:
a)Transformation of Music in North India
b) Rise of New Forms: Khyal, Tumri,Ghazal
c) Kathak: Towards Secular Dance
d) Indo-Persian Aesthetics: Kitab I Navras

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 4. Popular Theatres:
a) Swang b) yakshagana c ) Kathakali d) Pandwani e)burrakatha

Paper PFAR 0891: Sessional

Living Traditions

A. Conceptualizing liveness and vitality in the context of

performing arts - everyday performances,
- ritual practices,
- performances associated with social lives,
- Framing a) Identity, b) Solidarity, c) Boundaries, d) Norms, e) Resistances, f)
Collectives,
g)Gender.

B. Analysing impulses within and outside for change

- the push and pull that alter needs as well expressions of a community.

C. Processing cultural idioms to adjust to changing circumstances

- to accommodate ideas of tradition as well as transition
- working on new ideas for tourism, trade, cultural economy,
establishing global connections and so on

D. Assimilation, acculturation and appropriation

E. The course will be using examples from different community practices

from India and the processes of change that communities invent or adjust
themselves to.
- Women’s songs during marriage
- Dances associated with rites of passage
- Impersonations
- Hunting riuals and performances
- Performing resistance in the radical performances of Gadar
- Kullu dasserah and similar sites of politico-ritual performance
- Jaisalmer Festival and the changing Manganiyar performances in Coke
Studio.
- The UNESCO cultural heritage and Kalbeliya ‘dance’

OR

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 Eastern and North Eastern Indian Performing Arts

Beginning with a historical survey of the political and cultural scenario of

eastern India and North Eastern India (the states of West Bengal, Assam,
Orissa, Bihar, Manipur, Sikkim, Tripura and Nagaland), introducing the major
performance forms of the region and their roots in the oral narrative / balladic /
storytelling traditions in the different languages of the region, focusing on select
forms—Odissi; Bidesiya; Srotriya; the Assamese travelling theatre; Jatra in
Bengal, Orissa, Assam and Tripura; Ojapali; Lai Haraoba, Wari Liba; Thang-ta;
the new theatre in West Bengal, Assam, Orissa, Manipur and Bihar in post-
Independence India and the modern and contemporary directors; Tagore and the
Santiniketan arts; Uday Shankar and his tradition; IPTA; the Bengali musical
tradition; the Assamese musical tradition; new dance in West Bengal, Orissa
and Manipur.

SEMESTER 3

Paper PFAR 0901: Major

Cultural History of Indian Performing Arts – Modern Society

The Indian performing arts, developing under the impact of colonial political and cultural
policy; the problematic discourse of nationalism and revivalism, leading to a ‘rediscovery’
of Indian Traditions (particularly in the new institutionalization of Bharatnatyam and
Kathakali, and later Odissi; and the recasting of the musical gharanas; the IPTA; the
divides, between metropolitan, rural, tribal, folk performances, and the role of the post-
Independence Akademis and State-driven institutions; the linguistic redistribution of states
and the resurgence of regional performative identities, and rediscoveries of lost, decaying
or neglected forms; the emergence of media; globalization; the pressures of media, capital,
and the drive of tourism.

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 Paper PFAR 0902: Major

Writing Performance

A primarily instructive module, drawing extensively on Papers 1, 2, 3, 5, 6,

7, and 9, to train the student to:
i) document, curate and archive performance;
ii) interview practitioners, traditional masters, scholars, performers,
audiences, etc. Annotating the interviews, authenticating them and
generating supportive critical apparatus;
iii) review performance;
iv) analyse and develop theoretical and critical thought;
v) read and interpret dramatic texts, performances, and memorial and
archival texts and histories, oral traditions, narrative conventions.

Paper PFAR 0903: Major

Designing Performance

Design is an artistic organization. Work of art will have an inner design by the
creative abilities of the artist/ artists. A performance should be so designed as to
facilitate communication of the artists. It is the joint work of the artist - more
importantly the director and the organizer. The technical crews of the
performance and FoH management are important parts of the assistance to this.
The safety, needs and comforts of artists and audience are of prime concerns,
but the intended impact is the target.
Course includes study of the following;
Place of performance: - 1) Space for performance, placing audience,
backstage
2)Environments 3)Indoor performance and outdoor Performance
Time: 1) Duration of performance 2) Schedule - tight and flexible 3)
Context of performance

Audience - Prekshaka: 1) General 2) Target audience 3) Reading the

response and improvisation Ahaarya - Gathering support from plastic arts:
1) Sets 2)Properties 3)Costumes; 4)Light - illuminating artists - punctuating
- illuminating the audience ; 5) Managing volume and texture of sound in
keeping with Place, Time and Audience by the performer and through
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 amplifiers and Microphones (Technically engineering the source and the
delivery of sound) in keeping with acoustics.

Visual designs for an audio performance

Audio designs for a visual performance

Support material like Brochure - preparing and distributing
Compeering
Formal and informal interventions

Paper 0991: Sessional

Text and Performance: Adaptations and Translations

A. A close analytical study of selected playtexts in production /

performance history , including translations / transferences to
other linguistic / cultural milieu, e.g. Oedipus, Antigone, The
Trojan Women, The Oresteian Trilogy, Hamlet, King Lear,
Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, Tempest, Doctor
Faustus, Faust, Tartuffe, Shakuntala,
Karnabharam, Mudrarakshasa, Mrichchhakatikam, Mother
courage and Her Children, Life of Galileo, Arturo Ui, Death of a
Salesman, The Condemned of Altona, the Flies, Men Without
Shadows, Oh What a Lovely War, Look Back in Anger, Waiting
for Godot, Krapp’s Last Tape, Rhinoceros, The Visit, Ghosts, Miss
Julie, Hedda Gabler, An Enemy of the People, A Doll’s House,
Raktakarabi, Adhey Adhurey, Hayavadana, Nagamandala, Ebong
Indrajit, Michhil (Juloos), Tiner Talwar, Udhhwasta
Dharmashala, Shantata! Court Chalu Ahe, Ghashiram Kotwal,
Chakravyuha, Draupadi, Pebet, Siri Sampige, Nabanna,
Debigarjan, Rajjrakta, Rajdarshan, Sajano Bagan, Mahachaitra,
Kallol, Mahavidroha, Nayan Kabirer Pala, Mephisto.

B. The question of adaptation and its problems

C. Cinematic versions of playtexts and theatrical performances
D. The performance texts—texts reconstructed from predominantly
non-verbal performance
E. Translating plays

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 OR

Dance in India: Practice and Theory

This course on Dance in India – aims is to create a critical awareness of dance

and movement practices across space and time – in different geographies and
communities. Challenging the notions of hierarchical positions claimed by the
classical forms, this course intends to create a space for differences in terms of
movements practices, somatic understandings and corporeal engagements that
identify certain activities as dance.

The first section of the course will deal with categories such as margi / desi,
folk / classical, – to establish the functional understanding of dance forms in
India – that exist as a part of everyday practice, of rites of passage and as
aesthetics tools of communication especially created for the proscenium.

The second section would focus on the eight recognized “classical” forms -
Kathakali, Bharatanatyam, Kathak, Oddissi, Manipuri, Kuchipudi, Mohini
Attam and Sattriya, taking up the debates around their history, framing the
process within the histories of reconstruction of these once-local forms to make
them worthy of the national stage, as a part of nation-building strategies.

The third section will engage with the reception of dances, for participatory
celebrations of the community to exclusive proscenium space. The audience
and patronage of dance in India will be discussed vis a vis the changes in the
regional forms and the emergence of the classical dances in post-colonial times.

Lastly, the course would endeavour to contextualize the contemporary

developments in Indian Dance within the fast-changing globalized market-
driven consumer economy. The changing spectrum of dance practices of the
diaspora community – the results of constant migrations and exposure and the
influence of cinema, and digital media – and the Bollywood dance as a global
phenomenon shall be contextualized within the structure of global, local and
global practices.

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 OR

Sound and Music

The magical turn of sound into art is music. Any performance be it only audio or
audiovisual necessarily has music built into it. Music comes from sound and non-
music sounds should gell into the performance and allow filtering of unwanted
sounds which is natural to human beings. Rhythm and Melody as basic factors of
all music all over the world need be studied by a student of performing arts. The
physical and cultural environments mark the melodies and rhythms and are also
markers of feelings and emotions. In any performance the technical aspects of
sound and creative artistic aspects of sound and music are of supreme importance.
One need know to engineer them.

1. Sound as from animate and inanimate world

2. Physics of inanimate sound and the biology of animate sound – brief
introduction
3.Mimicking birds and animals; important relations of sound to feelings and
emotions
1.Body and sound: rhythm of the body and rhythm of the sound. Clapping,
dancing and sounds
2. Sound - Voice – Music; Pitch, notes and melodies
3. Music – prosody and Language
4. Percussion instruments
5. String and Wind instruments
6. Electronic instruments
7. Sound magnification and acoustics
8. Musical compositions and composing music
9. Music and Dance; Sound and Music in Drama

Paper 0992: Dissertation Part 1

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SEMESTER 4

Paper PFAR 1001: Major

Theatre and Acting

A. Reconstructing a history of acting in theatre, covering 5th century BC Greece,

Elizabethan England, the European comic tradition (the world of the
Harlequin), Naturalism, Realism, Stanislavski, Brecht and Epic Theatre, the
body in theatrical space.
B. The Indian experience—from realism a return to the roots in dance, folk
and tribal theatre.
C. The musical theatre
D. Embodiment and Representation

Paper 1002: Major

Dance and Body in Society

The course seeks to discuss the principle discourses within dance Studies in different
parts of the world starting with 3 basic readings to set the background for
understanding and defining dance as an embodied communication: A. Trying to
define dance:
- As physical behaviour- Movements are formed as the human body releases energy
through organized muscular responses to the stimuli received from the brain. As a
result the creator
and the instrument of dance are one and the same, as the action or the existential
flow of dancing movements is inseparable with the dancer.
- As cultural behaviour- Dance reflects and is largely born out of values, attitudes ,
beliefs.
- As social behaviour- Dance acts as the tool for maintenance of identity , and social
- As political behaviour- Dance acts as the forum articulation and transmitting
political
- As communicative behaviour- Dance is “Text in Motion” (Hilda Kuper). “Humans
move solidarity. It also reflects and shapes, and maintains patterns of social
organization attitudes,

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 ideas, and values. and belong to movement communities, just as they speak and
belong to speech communities” (Alan Lomax). feelings as well as outward
expressions, in an individual or in a group.
- As Psychological behaviour- dance involves cognitive and emotional behaviour,
internal

B. Functions of dance
- Why and when do humans dance

C. Theorizing dance: Looking at movements as culture

- The idea of dance
- Grammars and meanings and movements
- Moving to dancing: Between Aesthetics and Labour

D. Body in Dance: politics and Poetics of gender and identity

- Politics of the bodies of difference and the bodies of discourse.
- Engendering and “un-gendering” of body in space and time, “shaped” in history,
and
- The notion of the gaze vs. the body
- Contextualizing the queer in dance

Paper PFAR 1003: Major

Indian Music

It consists of an understanding of basic concepts underlying Indian Music. In

over three thousand years there are some common elements of rhythm and
melodies that have grown into a vast repertoire of Indian Music. This course
shall try to understand the dynamics of growth in Indian Music. In fact any
one of the regional and community music is seamlessly in communion with
the other in the whole subcontinent. Hence this is an important part of the
cultural study as well.

1. Nada – focusing on the sound outside and sound inside.

2. Swaras from 3 to 7 and further divisions; sthayis – Mandra madhyama and tara
3. Ragas – the basic and the derived ragas; the scheme of shruti, ragas and
improvisations on the same
4. Laya- Rhythm and Tala – cyclical beats (Aavarta): Basic frame work and
improvisations
5. Vedic recitals and chanting traditions with special emphasis on Sama,
Religious music and chanting like gurubani and sufi music and also samkirtans
6. Gathas, gitis and gaana
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 7. The cyclical movement from classical to non-classical; Marga –Desi
8. Music as known from Natyashastra, Brhaddesi(c.6th cent) and
Sangitaratnakara(13th cent.)
9. Music in bhakti movements; from courts to streets
10. Traditions of Bhajans and mass singing
11. Contacts with Perso-Arabic traditions
12. Indigenous Instruments - Classical and folk – major divisions and usages
13. Hindustani and Carnatic - as two major Classical traditions:
important distinctions, important composers and compositions. Major
performance styles and jugal bandis
14. Adaptations of western instruments with special reference to
Harmonium in North and Violin in South
15. Indian Music in Dance, Drama and Cinema
16. Main performer and the accompanying artists

Paper PFAR 1091: Sessional

Performing Arts Management

A. The Performing arts and its presentations: for generating a range of

activities from education to cultural exports for India.
- This course in designed as one unique introduction to the required skills as a
performing arts administrator
- Assess the financial, legal needs and realities of performing arts organisations
- Plan and coordinate the production and presentation of the performing arts
- Draw on project management skills in organising performing arts and
cultural projects like festivals, large events etc.
B. Turning exciting artistic ideas into reality
- Conduct effective marketing communication
- Conceptualise, plan and execute a project or event
- Improve management effectiveness and efficiency
- Strategize and help position an arts organisation in the arts scene
C. Professional stage management

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 - To work with directors before a theatrical production to ensure an optimal
performance. – developing organizational and communication developing skills;
- practical skills, like first aid, are highly valued.

The multiple processes during rehearsal - the stage manager records actors'
attendance, writes down actor notes, reminds the cast and crew about
rehearsals, helps with blocking and ensures props are available. A stage
manager also works with the show's technical manager to outline and
coordinate necessary stage crew work. Once the show opens, stage managers
oversee the backstage operations of the show during each performance.
D. Curation: as it refers to wider meaning of curating as applied to performing arts.
- Developing critical writing skills to write proposals, advertisements, and critical
material related to the promotion and assessment
- Curators are the interpreters who frame the moments of the evolution of
performing arts or of the history of a form, connecting them with specific
aspects of cultural, artistic, social or economic relevance.
-

OR

Performance Policy

Focusing on the interface of the State, Commerce, Media and

Performance, the course will offer a historical overview of

i) the State’s engagement with the performing arts, in the colonial

and post-colonial periods;
ii) censorship of performance;
iii) marketing and dissemination of performance beyond national borders;
iv) cultural exchange;
v) projection and sharing of regional performance models—Centre-state
interfaces and politics;
vi) creative industries in the tourism scenario;
vii) the corporate presence.

Paper 1092: Dissertation Part 2

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