"Staging Gender in Ramlila of Ramnagar”. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Women in the Indian Performance Tradition
2016
The Samyukta special issue on 'Women in Indian Performance' is a continuation of the research focusing on women in Asian performance which I started in 2013.. Being a performer and researcher on Kutiyattam from India, I am specifically interested in studying the contribution of women to Indian performance traditions and this special issue is the culmination of that ambition. The volume brings together eight essays and two interviews contributed by scholars from India, the United States and Italy. The contributions also cover a range of highly interesting topics, from the interview of Kalanidhi Narayanan about her initial years of training and career, to a critical review of Nirbhaya, a play on the Delhi gang rape written by Yael Farber in 2013. Essays and interviews this volume feature offers a radical reassessment of the place of women in Indian performances. What is the purpose of this special issue beyond the personal reasons listed above? Indian performance practice have been an active area of study among theatre scholars and practitioners all over the world for several decades, exerting substantial influence on the contemporary performance practices and actor-training methods. Nevertheless, critical debates and studies that aim at investigating and reassessing the role of women and their contribution to artistic practices in the Indian performance scene are relatively limited. Given the fact that Indian performances are broad and varied in number and style, such studies only marginally address the place and contribution of women in Indian performances. Critical work generating a more comprehensive view On women in Indian performances and mapping a broader territory in this relation is indeed necessary. Therefore, Samyukta special issue on 'Women in Indian performance is a novel attempt at initiating thoughts, generating scholarly work and critically reassessing the contribution of women in Indian performances. Complexities involved with assessing the place of women in Indian performances are manifold and I am attempting to simply map the territory. Academic essays and interviews published in this special issue aim to acknowledge the creative contributions of women practitioners in Indian performances. I genuinely hope that this volume will make significant contribution to the area of gender studies in India.
International Journal of English Literature and Social Sciences, 2021
One of the most misunderstood ideas among the socio-literary discourses is, perhaps, Gender Performativity. It is often confused with our physical identities and the whole idea of ‘Performance’ becomes an error. Mahesh Dattani is well known for his dealing with a wide range of themes including unusual love-triangles, same-sex relationships, subversion of patriarchy and child-sex abuse, etc that includes the idea of ‘Performance’ as well. His Dance Like a Man (1989) is one such play where he creates the parallel binary worlds [i.e Patriarchy and Matriarchy] for us. The characters in this play fail to understand their true self and thus, get entangled in the labyrinth of the idea of ‘Performance’. Similarly, Rituparno Ghosh’s Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish (2012) explores the problems in the character in understanding their real identities and getting themselves attached into the war of sexual limitations. This paper explores a comparative study of both texts: how they try to represen...
Performing Women: A Critical Study of Construction of 'Woman' in Ancient Indian Drama
Theatre Street Journal, 2022
It is obvious that representation of women in Ancient Indian Drama and Sanskrit dramaturgy was not as powerful and iconic as men though woman have been integral part of Indian drama and dramaturgy since its inception. The question is not about assigning greater roles to women characters but the question is the mere representation of the 'women'. The 'women' of the most of the Sanskrit plays have been shown as passive and at the receiving end while their 'men' counterparts have been shown active and doers, barring few exceptions. And as Bharata in his first chapter of Natyasastra written, Drama is mere representation of the real world. In that sense whether the kind of representation given to 'Woman' in Sanskrit Drama/Ancient Indian Drama do signify anything or suggest about the real well being of the 'woman' in society.
Between Fame and Shame: Performing Women - Women Performers in India
2011
This book highlights the involvement of women-real or through representationin a range of performances found in different geographical areas and among different social groups in India. It is the outcome of the 3 rd International Würzburg Colloquium on Indian Studies entitled Changing Roles and Perceptions of Women Performers in Indian Culture, held at the University of Würzburg, Germany, in 2005, and aims to help us understand better the troubled relations between women and the public performances. (Brückner et al. 2011: 9) Soon after, Brückner specifies that, even though each essay focuses on a particular kind of performance 'this book will not attempt to theorize the concept of 'performance'. 'Performance' here is used loosely to refer to a number of cultural events, which are-in varying degrees-set apart from day-today life because they involve or create a 'special space', a 'special time (frame) and/or occasion' and use 'special people', for instance trained or initiated performers and ritual specialists. The cultural performances described in the following essays range from possession performed by women as a religious service to a deity, or as medium of access to 'divine discourse' to on-stage performances by professional actresses representing different performance genres (p. 9). The book is a precious contribution to the study of Indian female ritualistic performers, stage and cinema actresses, dancers, as well as to the analysis of feminine characters impersonated by male actors. It also deals with the female individual and mass possession in rural South India, where women act as mediators between village deities and humans, by focusing also on the process of moralization and stigmatization of those cults in which women are the main performers. The volume is divided into three main parts, namely, 'Theory', 'History and Social Context', and 'Interpretation'. The first part frames 'theoretically' the changing status of performance genres and the role of women performers therein. The second part contextualizes historically the attested presence of female performing artists on the stage in ancient times by analysing Tamil, Malayalam and Sanskrit epigraphic and literary sources. The socio-political order in which such arts and ritual performances evolved and were enacted firstly in temples theatres and, later, on the cinema screen is also analysed here. The third and last part of the volume is entirely devoted to the techniques of learning, interpreting and, finally, rendering female roles on the stage by male artists.
Religion has always had a prominent role in formulating and influencing social norms, codes of conduct and notions of idealism. Role of religious texts is critical in this regard because the codification of such norms is mostly derived out of these scriptures. This paper explores the interaction of Ramayana as a text in Ramakatha sessions with the gender norms in contemporary times. It looks at consumption of Ramayana in the form of Ramakatha discourses that involve preaching and lectures based on Ramayana in the modern-day context and daily ritualistic reading of the Tulsidas Ramacharitamanas, thus analysing its relation to the construction of an ideal (Hindu) Woman. Drawing from the field observations and interactions during Ramakatha sessions held in various cities of Uttar Pradesh in 2013, I examine women's access to public space and socio-political role played by them in organising/mobilising the community on the basis of Hindutva Ideology. Exploring how within these broad areas there are prescribed rules and norms set for gender performances based on ideals of feminine and masculine attributes I will also discuss how access to public space and boundaries of spirituality for the ideal Hindu woman are perceived by audience and moralized by preachers.