Though the drama in the Jonaki era was more read than performed, it is remarkable to note that, though early-modern Assamese literature, with a few exceptions, does not yield great dramas, Assamese society has always been a theatre-going one. Drama developed in Assam contemporaneously with English drama in the fifteenth century. Alongwith the English church performances, mysteries and morality plays, the neo-Vaishnavite movement established religious drama and, with it, a classical dance form, the Satriya (of the salras or monasteries). But Assamese drama did not develop in the manner of English drama, and the classical, devotional, and historical strains were still strong into the twentieth century. Modern Assamese drama was established in the 1940s by Jyoti Prasad Agarwala and continues to flourish. But even today, perhaps fittingly, successful dramatists are defined by performances at large, rather than by publications. Masses of people flock to the touring theatre companies that move through the Assamese countryside and towns performing popular plays that are not to be found in published form. The establishment of All India Radio in 1948 saw the rise of another form of non-literary drama. |