Abhilash Pillai's stage adaptation of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (2005–6) introduced a new visual language to Indian theatre, conceiving performance between theatre and cinema. Pillai's work presents history as memory, amnesia and re-remembering within the framework of a multisensorial scenography that largely uses the vocabularies of the Bollywood film industry. The politics of the performance lies less in the thematic than in its optical dynamics, different as they are from both scene painting and the aestheticization of the public sphere. The production shows how theatre experience in a media society may primarily build on the perceptual, but without dismissing text or suspending the cognitive altogether. The visual media are used more as an intervention in politico-aesthetic discourse than as mere technology. As I explain the reasons for the long absence of any scholarly study of the production, I also consider its relevance to the current political scene in India.

中文翻译：

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阿比拉什·皮莱的《午夜之子》：通过光学表演政治

阿比拉什·皮莱 (Abhilash Pillai) 改编自萨尔曼·拉什迪 (Salman Rushdie) 的舞台剧午夜的孩子们(2005-6) 为印度戏剧引入了一种新的视觉语言，构思了戏剧和电影之间的表演。皮莱的作品在多感官场景的框架内将历史呈现为记忆、失忆和重新记忆，该框架主要使用宝莱坞电影业的词汇。表演的政治性与其说是在主题上，不如说是在其视觉动力上，这与场景绘画和公共领域的审美化不同。该作品展示了媒体社会中的戏剧体验如何主要建立在感知之上，但又不排斥文本或完全暂停认知。视觉媒体更多地被用作政治美学话语的干预，而不仅仅是技术。当我解释长期以来没有对该作品进行任何学术研究的原因时，我也考虑了它与印度当前政治局势的相关性。