Rustom Bharucha trained as a dramaturg in the first batch of dramaturgy students at the Yale School of Drama between 1977-1980. In 1981 he received his Doctor of Fine Arts from the School of Drama and proceeded to teach and conduct workshops in different parts of the world, including India, the Philippines, South Africa and Brazil on themes relating to the politics of touch, violence, empowerment and transformation.
A renowned writer in the fields of interculturalism, secularism and oral history, he has written a number of books, notably Theatre and the World, The Politics of Cultural Practice, Chandralekha: Woman/Dance/Resistance, The Question of Faith, In the Name of the Secular, Rajasthan: An Oral History, Another Asia: Rabindranath Tagore and Okakura Tenshin and Terror and Performance.
He has been a Fellow of the International Research Centre/Interweaving Performance Cultures in Berlin; the Project Director of Arna-Jharna: The Desert Museum of Rajasthan devoted to the study of traditional knowledge systems; and the Artistic Director of the Inter-Asian Ramayana Festival at the Adishakti Theatre Laboratory in Pondicherry.
Recently retired from his job as Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies in the School of Arts and Aesthetics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, Rustom is working on a critical edition of essays on Performing Ramayana, co-edited with Paula Richman, and looks forward to conducting a number of workshops on new dramaturgical models for theatre and social transformation in different parts of the world.
Last Updated: 2018