ABSTRACT
I want to examine broad trends and discuss different forms of theatre censorship rather than present data on specic cases and events in this chapter. However, I have tried to locate the landmarks of overt and covert forms of censorship in the course of the discussions about the dyadic relationship between the agencies of censorship and the recipients of the act. Theatre censorship is a broad subject, which differs from other forms of censorship in one important sense. Theatre presents the message directly to the audience who is sitting in front of the performers and can, therefore, convey both overt and covert messages through direct communication with spectators using multiple sign systems. Both proscenium and street theatres have drawn the attention of rulers and administrations in different parts of the world at different times and have encountered opposition from social groups defending their beliefs and political ideas. My focus is on theatre censorship in South Asia, where practitioners of various kinds of performance have faced censorship in both closed theatres and open spaces. In some cases, this is a matter of rulers passing laws to censor plays, while in others people have taken law into their own hands and made fatal attacks on theatre artists in the open.
