ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to study the evolution of North Indian urban theatre during the 19th century. King Wājid Alī Shāh (r.1847–56) gave a fillip to the rejuvenation of Indian theatrical arts with his first play, Rādhā Kanhaiyya kā qissa, staged in 1848. Thus the process of evolution of urban theatre, with dance and music as its most vital elements, began under the royal patronage at the Awadh capital, Lucknow. A similar stage-play Inder-sabhā, written in 1851–1852 by Saiyid Agha Husain Amānat, was performed outside the Awadh court. This play was an advance on the jalsas or the plays staged at the royal court, and it gave a definite direction to the theatre. The new variety of dance-music theatre was such a success that it came to be emulated so much that the term sabhā became a synonym for theatre. The representative of the traditional theatre swāng, and its urban variant nautankī began to follow Inder-sabhā with respect to language, prosody and musical forms as well as in its cultural ambience. It inspired the Parsi theatre at Bombay, and its lineage extended into the film industry up to the middle of the 20th century.
