Finally, the paper will illustrate through examples of Bollywood and interviews with BharatNatyam teachers (in Sweden) how improvisation, and newness is brought into various aspects of performance arts, thereby challenging Sheldon Pollock’s reading of the Natyashastra, as being rigid and frozen in time and devoid of bringing novelty, making them irrelevant to our times. There will also be a focus on the concept of hieropraxis (art as worship, pleasing both people and Gods), which was common, both to Indian and Greek art forms. Using Bharat Gupt’s study of the poetics and Natyashastra, this paper will focus on similarities in both Indian and Greek aesthetics, also highlighting when and why contemporary notion of aesthetics in European theatre moved away from the Greek, which was more similar to the Indian sensibility. An integral part of aesthetics both Indian and Greek (although European performing arts moved away from the original concept of Greek aesthetics) is improvisation on the rules that are suggested for a clear structure, which by definition is fluid and allows room for ‘newness. Rasa, in Indian context, applied to both the performer and the audience is considered an alaukika (other worldly) experience. Rasa, meaning gist, is the essence that one feels when experience an art piece, be it performance or static art. In answering the questions specified above, this paper looks to contribute to ‘the critical analysis on the journey of the text of Nāṭyaśāstra’ (sub-theme 2 of the conference) and to foreground insights, from studying what seems like lesser-researched aspects of the text, insights, that would be relevant in the pursuit of the framework for a new critical edition of the Nāṭyaśāstra. What does the landscape described in the Nāṭyaśāstra look like? How does it compare with the landscape described in, for instance, the Mahābhārata? Can a reading of Bharata’s Nāṭyaśāstra in 2019 still yield clues about its spatial origin? Answers to these questions form the crux of this paper which also looks to a) address one of the many questions listed by scholar Kapila Vatsyayan (in her foreword to the 2016 book 'NĀṬYAŚĀSTRA-Revisited' which contains her essay ‘NĀṬYAŚĀSTRA-A history of criticism’) and b) to take one small step in a research area identified by another scholar Bharat Gupt (in his essay in 'NĀṬYAŚĀSTRA-Revisited').
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