BHARAT GUPT

Theatre Theorist and Cultural Analyst

Associate Professor of English , College of Vocational Studies, University of Delhi.

Born in 1946 in Moradabad, a small town in the Uttar Pradesh province of India of mixed Hindu-Muslim population, best known for its engraved art on brassware and a little less for hindustani music and urdu poetry. Parents moved in early fifties to Delhi, the new capital of modernity and political intrigue, where I went to school and college and studied English, Hindi, Sanskrit and philosophy, but spent every summer in the district town.

Spent a year in the US at the end of Counter-Cultural days and took a Master's degree from Toronto.I learnt to play the sitar and surbahar under the eminent musician Uma Shankar Mishra and studied musicology , yoga sutras and classics under Acarya Brihaspati and Swami Kripalvananda.

Trained both in modern European and traditional Indian educational systems, I have worked in classical studies, theatre, music, culture and media studies and researched as Senior Onassis Fellow in Greece on revival of ancient Greek theatre.

As a classicist I came to realise that ancient Greek drama and culture as a whole, was given an unduly empirical color by the modern West. Looking at things from my own location I saw that Greek theatre was closer to ancient Indian theatre as an ethical and religious act or hieropraxis. Instead of being seen as Western and Eastern, Greek and Indian theatres should be seen rooted in the Indo-European cultural beliefs, myths and idolatory and the aesthetics of emotional arousal.

I have lectured on theatre and music at various Universities in India, North America and Greece.

I am on visiting faculty at the National School of Drama, Delhi and the Bhartendu Academy for Dramatic Arts , Lucknow.

My practicle involvement with traditional Indian temple architecture resulted in initiating the construction of a "nagar style" stone temple with carvings which will give Delhi a traditional temple after a millennium.

My published books are : Dramatic Concepts Greek and Indian (1994) and Natyashastra , Chapter 28: Ancient Scales of Indian Music (1996). I write for research journals and national newspapers also on cultural and educational issues.

My forthcoming books are : (1) Natyasastra, Chapter 17: A Critique of Theatrical Polyglossia, (2) Natyasastra Chapters 29-36 , Trans. into Hindi, (3) Dibbuk Ki Prem Katha, a translation into Hindi of Anskey's Dibbuk. (4) Modern Greek Productions of Ancient Greek Plays , and (5) the first Edition of the Sanksrit-English- Greek Dictionary of Demitrios Galanos, the eighteenth century Greek Indologist, and (6) India : A Cultural Decline or Revival

Address:
PO Box 8518 , Ashok Vihar , Delhi 110052 India
home tel : (91) India , (11) Delhi , 2724-1490 and mobile +91 98100 77914 and STUDY 91 129 404 4590
email: bharatgupt@vsnl.com
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Other Places to go:

Dramatic Concepts: Greek and Indian
Natyashastra: Chapter 28
Sri Ram Mandir
Articles on Culture and Politics
Curriculum Vitae

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