Folk Theatre of Rajasthan: Introducing Three Marwari Khyal Plays Translated Into English

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Tom Ault has written a theatre ethnography that brings Rajasthan’s folk tradition of khyal to readers in both descriptions and translations of the plays, based on his many periods of research and hanging out with khyal players and affecionados. A performance genre probably stemming from the soliloquies in poetic Pingal and Dingal of Rajasthan’s bards, known as Charans, these khyals offer folk renditions of rule and misrule, contemporary issues and past heroics, and the romance of Rajput desert kingdoms. Ault has been engaged with these shows there, and as an American theatre professor he knows his subject well. Everyone will find something to enjoy in Ault’s compendium of khyal, and will probably be tempted to search out a performance of this disappearing folk art at a Rajasthani cattle fair or on a moonlight night in a desert village with stars overhead.