Theatre as Alter/"Native" in Derek Walcott

This compendium entitled ‘Theatre as Alter/"Native" in Derek Walcott,’ authored by Dr. Nirjhar Sarkar is a critically detailed, structurally extensive, and theoretically formidable work which holds its focal point on the exploration of the dramaturgical aesthetics of the Nobel Laureate Derek Alton Walcott, whose theatrical oeuvre is less probed in contrast to his poetry. This particular monograph by Dr. Sarkar is posited on a structured fivefold division. It uses a nuanced, scholastic idiom, but counterbalanced with a lucidly probing analysis of the socio-cultural and political issues intrinsic to the theatrical realm of Walcott – viz. the status of the creolized theatre, the construction of a heterogeneous cultural identity in Caribbean theatre, and the process of ‘decolonization’ that is held as an autonomous extension of Caribbean cultural nationalism in general and Walcott’s works based on adaptation in particular. Walcott’s select plays and adaptations have been dealt in this monograph and minute analytical discussions of these works offer strategic critical assistance to readers to trace the genesis of alter-“native” theatre-aesthetics in Walcott’s dramaturgy, as part of an overarching cross-cultural discourse in the Caribbean archipelago. Hence, the monograph is irrefutably a significant entry, in particular to international Walcott scholarship, and certainly to Caribbean theatre as a whole.

Prof. Dr. Subhadeep Paul

Department of English

School of Literature, Language & Cultural Studies

Bankura University, India