ABSTRACT
The notion of post-colonial studies has rarely managed to include theatre in the scope of its disciplinary paradigm. Being oriented towards literary criticism, in effect it marginalizes theatre and to a lesser extent drama. Theatre, moreover, needs tools of analysis, which would allow the critique to find its way back into the analysis of practice. True, the dramatic text has in recent times been an object of interest for post-colonial scholars, but it is deliberately examined outside the realms of practice. This dichotomy of text and performance has its historical roots in colonial tradition. The application of post-colonial critical theories to mere dramatic texts has its problems. What is interesting, however, is that subaltern studies, the predecessor of post-colonial studies in Indian academia, had very strong parallel ties with the theatre of its time. This allowed a strong critical dialogue between the academic domain and the progressive theatre movement of the 1960s–1980s in which Chekhov was featured for the first time as a popular post-colonial text.
