Cirrus@Austlit

'The Nautanki Theatre Company (Nautanki) has been actively performing drama in Sydney since 2012, and it has been organising the South Asian Theatre Festival since 2016. We study their discourses, cultural politics, and practices; conduct an ethnographic observation of performances; and interview performers, organisers, and survey audiences of the 2019 theatre festival in-depth. We contend that by hosting performances and events, Nautanki creates a space for amicable, intercultural dwellings in which collective identity is forged through cross-cultural dialogue, deliberation, embodied aesthetics, and bottom-up intercultural ethics that shift state-promoted top-down multicultural ideas and policies. Nautanki also instils a sense of longing for cultural novelty, authenticity, and participation, and creates a hybrid cultural ‘South Asian’ community identity, in Sydney.' (Introduction)