Imaginging the Future India

Scientific advances, and scientific research are having a massive impact in India. Genetic modification, birth control, organ donation, pesticide pollution, HIV, inherited diseases – all are critically live concerns.  The ethical, economic and political debate about biomedical science is keenly felt on a day-to-day basis.  What India experiences and thinks about these issues today will lead the world tomorrow.

Shifting from a Eurocentric perspective, Theatrescience felt an urgent need to explore Indian ideas, and to investigate the connections between culture and science on the subcontinent. To this end, three of the Theatrescience team headed off late last year on a ten-day research trip which took them to Kolkata, Mumbai and Bangalore.

Theatrescience hosted wide-ranging discussions and eleven workshops with theatre writers, directors, performers, writers and companies, and with science, technology and arts students.

The team returned having learned of the centrality of biomedical science to a variety of key debates in India’s social, cultural and political arenas.  Importantly, it emerged that practitioners there are truly inspired by the idea of creating a crucible for the fusion of theatre and science.

Indian practitioners and scientists were keen to collaborate with the team to produce a major project to exploit some of Theatrescience’s techniques to develop and innovate new approaches to enhance Theatrescience’s future effectiveness.