Global Rasikas: Audience Reception for Akram Khan’s Desh

Abstract

Spectatorship is shaped by structures of feeling that link individuals to the social both in and out of the theatre. The Indian concept of “rasika,” in which reception operates at the union of knowledge and feeling, illuminates the responses of audience members who share Khan’s experience of cultural hybridity and transnational mobility, even as Khan acknowledges spectators who do not share his cultural references.