Email

haimanti.mukhoti@warwick.ac.uk

Supervisors

Dr. David Coates and Dr. Rashna Darius Nicholson

About me

I joined the Department of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick in September 2024, funded by the M4C Doctoral Partnership Award. Before that, I completed my Masters in History from University of Delhi in 2021. My under graduation was in history from Bethune College, University of Calcutta in 2019.

Research Interest

My research primarily lies in the area of amateur theatre practices in suburban towns or the mofussil in India, especially, Jalpaiguri and Balurghat, two towns in the northern part of the state of West Bengal. It problematizes the ‘ordinary’ theatre productions of the periphery as compared to the ‘extraordinary’ theatrical productions at the centres, facilitating dialogue/s among the national, regional, and local spheres of cultural practices.

The history of amateur theatre in Bengal, especially in Kolkata, goes back to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. However, it was only after the formation of the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) in 1942 did amateur group theatre become prominent in the theatrical landscape of Calcutta, as well as in other parts of Bengal. This phase came to be known as the group theatre movement in India, which was primarily motivated by leftist/anti-capitalist ideologies. Since their inception, these amateur group theatres have faced significant challenges, including inadequate infrastructure, limited funding, and low levels of participation. The thesis also aims to explore these ‘pleasures’—the aspirations and the love for what they do, and ‘perils’—the structural inequalities that exist on the amateur stage of suburban or peripheral areas.

Documentation of amateur group theatre, especially of theatre groups from suburban or mofussil areas, is scanty. Therefore, I primarily depend on the unconventional archives­—personal archival collections of photographs, costumes, scripts, newspaper reviews, letters or correspondences. In cases where these sources also have a miserable state of preservation, I will conduct in-depth personal interviews with the existing practitioners in the field and the progenies of practitioners who have now passed away. Through this approach, I will delve into the after-life of theatre culture in suburban towns.

Haimanti’s research is supervised by Dr. David Coates (Assistant Professor, Theatre and Performance Studies) and Dr. Rashna Darius Nicholson (Associate Professor, Theatre and Performance Studies).

Experience

I joined the Department of History at The Bhawanipur Education Society College in January 2023 as College Part-Time Lecturer (CPTT). I taught courses on the Modern Indian History and Museum and Archives.

In October 2021, I participated in an Oral History Workshop organised by the 1947 Partition Archives. As part of this, I conducted an interview of a partition survivor, currently situated in Barasat, India.

I have also worked as a freelance editor and proofreader in the publishing industry. Some of the publishers I have freelanced with include Primus Books and Cambridge University Press Assessment, India