Pure Entertainment: Parsi Theater, Gender, and Performance

For over fifty years Parsi theatre was famous for the sheer pleasure it brought to audiences in colonial India. It transformed the enjoyment of drama into a modern pastime. This cosmopolitan entertainment lured crowds to urban playhouses night after night with its passionate refrains of Urdu poetry and the melodious voices of cross-dressed youths.

Pure Entertainment traces how Parsi theatre wedded vernacular narrative and musicality to new stage technologies to create an aesthetic that appealed across classes and communities. Its performing women and female impersonators became the first media stars. It expanded the mythological, historical, and social genres, preparing the ground for the emergence of cinema. By running profitable companies, Bombay troupes travelled to ports like Madras and Rangoon, leaving behind an unmistakable legacy.

The fourteen essays in this volume represent Kathryn Hansen’s decades of research on the Parsi theatre. Her pioneering scholarship unites lifelong immersion in Indian languages with deep appreciation of oral performance culture and promises fresh insights for both, the general reader and the theatre specialist.