Performance of Tradition
An Ethnography of Hira Gasy
Popular Theatre in Madagascar

By Ingela Edkvist
December 1997
Uppsala University Press
ISBN: 91-554-4070-3
200 pages, illustrated
$41.50 paperback

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This study deals with the popular theatre performance of Hira Gasy, and its actors and audiences in the central highland regions Madagascar. The Hira Gasy has developed from a court to a rural performance during the last two centuries, a period influenced by first the British and then by the French presence in the country.

Today, the performances are given in diverse contexts, the most common being in connection with reburial ceremonies. The study is based on 19 months of fieldwork divided into five periods between1991 and 1996. The main argument is that the Hira Gasy performances provide a forumin which the problems of identification and belonging are discussed.

Ph.D. thesis.

Anthropology
Uppsala Studies in Cultural Anthropology, No. 23

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