ABSTRACT
This chapter explores folk theatre’s journey to cinema. The dominance of realistic impulses in Western theatre in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries paved way for theatre’s movement towards greater vividness in capturing outside realty in perceptible impressions. The chapter discusses that there were simultaneous attempts, particularly in those countries where Western dominance revealed itself as a transnational colonial hegemony, to contest, amalgamate and transfer the newly emerging media to native societies’ own particular social and cultural systems. Indian cinema was one such example wherein the technology of cinema, born and bred in Europe and America, was mixed with native traditions to produce some very interesting hybrid formations. The thesis which I explore in this chapter is how the legacy of folk theatres wedded to cinematic technique, transformed cinematic agency by contesting it with own traditions, styles and motifs to reveal the power of hybrid formations.
