Profile
Biography
Qaisar Abbas is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the School of Arts and Creative Technologies. His research focuses on theatre, performance, and cinema traditions and practices, and their cross-border and cross-cultural connections and exchanges.
His Leverhulme project entitled ‘Theatre of Colonial Lahore (1900-1947)’ studies the diverse drama, theatre, and performance traditions of colonial Lahore, focusing on the period between 1900 and 1947. Exploring the marginalized oral as well as dominant recorded practices, the project critically investigates the cultural productions of the multicultural city of Lahore by focusing on their scripts and themes, performative aesthetics, musical scores and compositions, acting techniques, playwrights, institutional structures, and working models. He is particularly interested in the transnational and cross-border connections of these performative practices within their colonial contexts and their links with the cultural industries of post-colonial Pakistani society, specifically, and more broadly of South Asia. The project also traces their aesthetic connections with the development of film and cinema tradition in colonial Lahore that emerged in the mid-1920s.
Qaisar received his PhD from the University of Exeter in 2023. His thesis, ‘From Protests to Entertainments, From Streets to Prosceniums: A Critical Study of Political Theatre in Punjab, Pakistan’ studied the changing creative practices of the political theatre movement in the Punjab region of Pakistan due to the processes of NGO-isation and neo-liberalization of theatre companies. He has also presented his work at various conferences in the UK and Pakistan.
Publications
Selected publications
Journal Articles
Abbas, Q. (2024). Decolonizing and Producing Working-class Theatre in Pakistan: The Poetics and Politics of Sangat Theatre’s Chog Kusumbhey Di (Picking Safflower). Asian Theatre Journal 41(2), 319-345. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/936939
Abbas, Q. (2024). NGOs and the Neo-liberalization of Political Theatre in Pakistan: Ajoka’s Surrender to Politics of Rights. New Theatre Quarterly, (40)1: 31-47.
Abbas, Q & Pir, G. (2017). Lahore: De-politicization of Public Spaces. THAAP Journal, Vol 8, 2017.
Abbas, Q., & Pir, G. (2016). History of the Invisible: A People’s History of the Transgendered Community of Lahore. THAAP Journal, (7):162-175.
Book Chapter
Abbas, Q. (2019). ‘Reliving History and Heritage: Theatre and Art Workshops with Kalasha Children’. in From Tsiam to the Hindu Kush: Kalasha people and their culture (pp153-172). Lahore: THAAP and UNESCO.
Conference Papers
Abbas, Q, (2025). 'Pakistani Entertainment Media - Making People Invisible' ; at MCAP-BNU International Media Conference 2025, on “Bridging Divides: Media Literacy for Informed and Connected Societies” (February 18-19, 2025) at Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.
Abbas, Q. (2021). ‘Ecology of Political Theatre in Punjab (Pakistan) under the NGOs projects: From the politics of resistance to the politics of rights’. – IFTR Conference 2021 at National University of Ireland, Galway.
Abbas, Q & Pir, G. (2018). ‘Politics of Hijra Performance in Pakistan’ – International Conference on Gender Studies, Leeds.
Research Reports
Recce Report:
Building Livelihood through Jewelry Design, Craftsmanship and Trade 2015 – THAAP.
Promoting ICH for Educators to Reinforce Education for Sustainable Development in Asia- Pacific Region. UNESCO, THAAP.
Accepted/Under Contract
Monograph
The Neo-liberalization of Political Theatre in Punjab (Pakistan): NGO-isation, Professionalization and Depoliticization. (Routledge)
Book Chapter
‘The Defiant Voices from the Margin: Punjabi Theatre Plays of Lakht Pasha’ (Routledge)
