This Place That Place: A Book Talk with Nandita Dinesh

Join the Department of Performance Studies for a conversation with MA Alum Nandita Dinesh about her new book, This Place | That Place.  This Place | That Place is a formally ambitious political and literary novel that centers on two unnamed characters from opposing sides of an unnamed war.

During a wedding under curfew, a “Deprogrammer” and “Protest Designer” grapple with the ways in which the war between their homelands pervades the unexplored and undeniable attraction between them. Interwoven documents of past correspondences unpack the protagonists’ history, their admiration for the other's work, and how each sees hope — in the other, because of the other — for their respective Places.

This Place | That Place is a dialogue-driven and evocative debut that functions as an allegory for any instance of militarized occupation. As much a visual read as it is a literary one, this novel offers new ways to think about intersections: between the personal and the political; between occupier and occupied; between the kinds of bonds that endure, and those that have no choice but to fracture.

Nandita Dinesh holds a PhD in Drama from the University of Cape Town in South Africa and an MA in Performance Studies from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. Focused on the role that theatre and writing can play during and after violent conflict, Nandita has conducted community-based theatre projects in Kashmir, India, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. She has written multiple books about her work and in 2017 she was awarded the Elliott Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy by Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. This is her first novel.

Photography credit: Anson Stevens-Bollen