Women's Theater and the Redefinitions of Public, Private, and Politics in North India 1 (original) (raw)

Women's theater and the redefinitions of public, private, and politics in North India

ACME: an international e-journal for critical …, 2002

A bstr act T his e ssay explore s the inte rse ctions be twe en pe rf ormanc e, ma te ria lity, a nd mar ginaliz e d women's struggles by de lving into the me anings of public a nd pr ivate , and the nua nc e d and var ied me anings of gende r ed r e sista nc e. Foc using on thre e ver y dif fe r ent kinds of the atric al pe rf or mance s by w omen in N orth I ndia , I a na lyz e how e ac h per f or ma nce a ppropriate s, c omplic ates, or r einf orc es the inter w oven pa tr iar cha l conce pts of public a nd priva te on the one ha nd, a nd f e mininity a nd ma sc ulinity on the other . In so doing, I also c onsider how both spa ce a nd kinship ar e str ate gica lly de ploye d in these per f or ma nce s, and the diff er e nt me anings of re sista nc e a nd fe minist politics e mbe dde d and implie d in ea c h per for ma nc e . I argue that a focus on these processes allows us to grapple with the ways in which gendered materialities -shaped by class, caste, and geographical locationbecome central to the articulation of politics. This framework opens up new "spaces" to examine how multiple publics are constituted and reconfigured in terms of their sociopolitical identities and provisional alliances in and through publicization/privatization struggles, without essentializing or fixing the meanings of either public or private or of the spaces in which public/private acts are enacted.

A Theatre That Lives -Political Theatre In Contemporary India

The paper discusses the importance of theatre from a societal presentation perspective. It focuses on the requirements that will enable the theatre to continue existing by maintaining a connection to the common mass and their problems or complaints. The Theatre of the Rebels is all that political theatre is.Political Theatre needs to be utilized as an instrument for social change, not just for entertainment. Human life is valuable, and it is our responsibility as artists to help save it.Political Theatre played an integral role in India's freedom struggle-what purpose does it serve in the country today? This paper discusses political theatre in modern India as well as India at large.

Not-Feminism: A Discourse on the Politics of a Term in Modern Indian Theatre

When speaking and writing about their theatrical practice, many women working in modern Indian theatre reject the terminology and teleology of what they see as neoliberal feminism. Taking my cue from the thoughts and writings of the most well-known female directors, actors, and playwrights of post-independence Indian theatre, I argue that theatrical performance in modern India offers a unique vehicle for agency, authorship, and engaging with the challenging task of creating a discourse of women and women's rights. Significantly, this discourse is formulated around the decolonial notion of not-feminism, rejecting Western feminism and in the very action of rejection creating its own space of future-oriented aesthetic articulation. K. Frances Lieder is a PhD candidate in interdisciplinary theatre studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her current research interests include the ethics of witnessing and the role(s) of violence in performances in " the Global South, " political performance in public spaces, and the performance of gender in popular culture in South Asia. Her most recent performance credits include directing a staged reading of Harvest and a site-specific performance of Lights Out, both by Manjula Padmanabhan. This paper proposes a theory of " not-feminism, " which emerges from analyzing contemporary Indian women artists' discussions of the theatre they are making. Not-feminism is exactly what it looks like, a theory that takes as its starting place the negation of the term " femi-nism, " but refuses to put a concrete term in its place. I trace this negation using discourse analysis to focus on how and why these women create theatre that they explicitly describe as not a feminist practice (not-feminism). This paper does not evaluate the success or failure of their attempts; its starting point is a primary tenet of a theory of the

Theatre as a Space of Political Economy

Third World Quarterly, 2010

This article studies political theatre as a space of political economy. When conceptualising theatre as a space of political economy, it is important to maintain distinctions between three formulations of the relationship between culture and development: that capitalism is cultural, that cultural labour is a space of political economy, and that culture is capital today. While agreeing with the first two formulations, this article suggests an amendment to the third formulation, as put forward by critical scholarship on the culturalisms of neoliberal governmentality, particularly in George Yu´dice’s influential book The Expediency of Culture. Rather than subsume culture completely within histories of state and capital while evacuating struggle and hope, the author draws on political activism and critical play by two theatre groups in India to theorise everyday political economy as grounded in multiple histories of power, producing complex subjects of struggle.

Street Theatre as Democratic Politics in Ahmedabad

Antipode, 2014

This work examines the politicized use of street theatre by an adivasi (indigenous) community in the city of Ahmedabad, India. We consider Chharas' deployment of theatre as a socio-spatial tactic in two interlocking registers: firstly, as a means through which to enact a re-scripting of criminalized subjectivity in the post-colonial moment; secondly and equally, to advance the practice and potential for democratic politics-a space for constructive encounter and dialogue across difference. We argue that performance furthers the staging of affirmative subjectivities, while providing a mechanism to challenge who has the right to be seen and heard within a public sphere. This article draws on ongoing collaborative research in Gujarat.

THEATRE AND SOCIOLOGICAL ISSUES WITH REFERENCE TO CONTEMPORARY INDIA

Theatre is a form of communication, which does not use technology as the primary channel. The primary role of such a medium is to inform, entertain, persuade, and provide a means for connecting people. Theatre in India, as we see it, has a rich history, heritage and culture. Many people in India believe that "Theatre is Cinema", and that the living theatre of the stage in the village square or in the temple is dead (Farley P. Richmond et al, 1993:3). However, we find Indian theatre very much alive. As time passed, the form of communication turned to a mediated communication which means the communication interaction using technology as the primary channel, around the world for which India is not an exception. However, the theatre form of 2 communication has been a key medium in addressing sociological issues. The objective of this paper is to examine the ace role played by the theatre in addressing the social problems in contemporary India.

A CRITICAL OVERVIEW OF THE EVOLUTION OF INDIAN THEATRE AND THE DEPICTION OF FEMINIST CONCERNS

Indian writers have written excellent prose, composed poems and written in English for more than a century, but it was not earlier than the thirties and forties that a suitable and systematic attempt was made to view their output as an independent literature and not a mere part of Anglo-Indian literature. It is, however, only after Independence that the volume of Indian writing in English has gone up considerably, and the need for its critical evaluation has become more urgent than ever before. When it comes to the early form of theatre, it featured various kinds of performances, often in the narrative form with singing, dancing, and reciting. The first significant contribution to Indian theatre was made by Bharata Muni, who authored the thirty-six books of "The Natyashastra". It is a theoretical description of theatrical performance, elucidating its style and motion. While the amateur movement gave way to the drama school theatre, towards the turn of the century, some existing active troupes turned into semi-professional drama schools with the help of amateurs. They continued to keep the theatre scene operative. Prayoga Ranga (Bangalore), Lokadharmi (Kochi) and Sopanam (Trivandrum) are examples of this trend. This article attempts to encapsulate the evolutional of Indian literary landscape with special emphasis on the evolution and growth of theatre and women playwrights. Traditionally women have never had, nor were allowed a voice of their own. "Because a woman has patience, she is not allowed to speak; And she never learns the words" is said by the narrator in the play Mangalam by Poile Sengupta. One of the major concerns of this study is to analyse a new trend in theatre-the Theatre of Protest and showcase its relevance in the plays of Poile Sengupta, one of the foremost contemporary Indian playwrights.