Making Nativepeer: The Process of Transformative Aesthetics

Abstract

INTRODUCTION This article describes the process of developing NativePeer, a transcultural adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s text Peer Gynt that I made in 2015 within the post-colonial Indian context. The adaptation was part of an assignment to direct the play at the National School of Drama, New Delhi. However, this article is limited to reflections on and handling of approaches and challenges in the adaptation process. I intended to make a text that would communicate with present-day Indian readers and audiences. It required a deep-rooted process, far beyond merely a textual translation. The fundamental task was to negotiate the source text within the socio-political-cultural context of colonially mediated modernity, representing the juncture between tradition and modernity of contemporary India. This juncture is the meeting place between two different political visions for economic and social reform after partition in 1947: the Gandhian project of reviving the village economy, and the Nehruvian vision of prosperity through rapid industrialization as a part of a Western-inspired secular modernization project. This divide still characterizes the socio-political climate in India. Moreover, one could understand the present situation in India as part of a wider notion of colonialist interpellation, which is implanted within the postcolonial structure. As Partha Chatterjee argues in his book The Nation and Its Fragments: