In his essay entitled ‘Poetry and Drama’, T. S. Eliot states that ‘a mixture of prose and verse in the same play is generally to be avoided’. The reason, says Eliot, lies in the fact that ‘each transition makes the auditor aware, with a jolt, of the medium’ (p. 13). Alternating use of prose and verse within the same work of art is justified, he adds, only when the author's specific purpose is to produce just such ‘a jolt’ in his audience. The case of Lorca's Blood Wedding and its recent 1990 Israeli production calls for a reassessment of Eliot's analytical approach.

Indian theatre practice under British colonial rule was marked by differing strategies of resistance: agit-prop drama to promote social and political reform; the preservation of classical dance as cultural heritage; and the continuing practice of folk rituals in rural areas outwith the immediate control of the colonial authorities. Postindependence India, however, has witnessed those ‘deviant’ practices of resistance become the dominant ideological performance practices of modern India. Much actor training continued to be modelled on British drama schools such as RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art); classical dances have survived to incorporate certain aspects of western ballet (for example, group sequences in Kathak); and the folk rituals have come increasingly under the microscope of western cultural tourists. Indian theatre practice, therefore, succumbs to the power of the dollar, as western academics and practitioners, with their financial and technological power, act as legitimizing agents for the global recognition of Asian culture. We are at a time when great currency is being attached to the notion of intercultural rejuvenation of home cultures by acts of productive reception with foreign cultures (a more positive definition of the practice by Erika Fischer-Lichte in direct response to Edward Said's charge of cultural colonialism which he terms orientalism). It is worthwhile taking note of how certain forms of modern Indian theatre are resisting intercultural practices, not by refusal or direct opposition, but by theatrical acts of intra-cultural rejuvenation, without the injection of the foreign culture as a serum.