Engendering Performance: Indian Women Performers in Search of an Identity

This book is a comprehensive critical history of women artistes in Indian theatre and dance of the colonial and post-colonial periods. Its underlying premise is that one cannot evaluate such performances in the Indian context without looking at dance and theatre together, unlike the course taken by traditional scholarship. The author weaves together issues of sexuality and colonialism, and culture and society to provide a holistic account of women performers in India. The distinguishing features of this book are: a close reading of archival materials, field surveys and extensive interviews that provide new information and insights. The book is divided into two sections, on the Actress and on the Danseuse, and displays how the two evolved in different ways. In doing this, it explores the theme of identity and body politics, while simultaneously balancing a historical narrative with emphasis on crucial individual topics. The book adopts a pluralistic approach combining history, economics, cultural studies, popular culture, anthropology, ethnography and feminist criticism. Archival photographs—some of which have never been published before—make it a collector’s item.

Table of Contents:
Foreword SAMIK BANDOPADHYAY - Ghulam Nabi Azad Introduction I: THE STORY OF THE ACTRESS Actresses of the Colonial Space: English Actresses in India Locating a New Space and Identity: Coming of the Indian Actresses Locating a New Space and Identity: Coming of the Indian Actresses Actresses in the Jatra Space II: OF THE WOMAN DANCER Natyasastra: Emerging (Gender) Codes and the Woman Dancer The Body and the Woman Dancer: What She is, or What She is Expected to be Emergence of the Contemporary Woman Dancer: Contribution of Tagore, Shankar and IPTA Tale of the Professional Woman Dancer in Folk Traditions in India: Commodification of Dance and the Traditional Dancing Women Conclusion: In Conversation with Samik Bandyopadhyay Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Bishnupriya Dutt, daughter of legendary theatre personalities Utpal Dutt and Sova Sen, is currently Associate Professor in Theatre Studies at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She was awarded a Ph.D. for her work on ‘Contributions of Theatre Magazines in the Growth and Genesis of Theatre Aesthetics’ from the University of Calcutta. Her recent publications include: ‘Actress Stories: Binodini and Amal Allana’, in Sue Ellen Case and Elaine Aston (eds), Staging International Feminisms (2007). She received a DAAD fellowship in Germany to study alternate aesthetic models for the theatre in post-colonial India. Dr Dutt has been an active member of the Feminist Working Group of the International Federation of Theatre Research, and has worked with the People’s Little Theatre, the largest repertoire in Calcutta. In 2006, she produced a play based on autobiographies of five actresses, titled Nati. This innovative play had its performance text created through a collaborative effort by the participant actresses. Urmimala Sarkar Munsi is a Visiting Faculty at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, where she teaches Dance Studies and Visual Ethnography. She has a Ph.D. in social anthropology on socio-cultural context of tribal and folk dance from Calcutta University. She has continued her post-doctoral work on issues of dance, gender and politics of performance. In March 2005, she was invited as the Artist-in-Residence by the Centre for World Performance Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has travelled widely for her research and has extensively documented traditional communities of professional women performers (Maibi, Nautanki, Nachni, Jogti) in India as a part of her research project.

Review :
This is a book for academicians engaged in performing arts and for dancers and women performers in theatre especially. The book is a comprehensive critical history of women artistes in Indian theatre and dance of colonial and post-colonial periods. Its underlying premise is that one cannot evaluate such performances in the Indian context without looking at dance and theatre together, unlike the course taken by traditional scholarship. The author weaves together issues of sexuality and colonialism, and culture and society to provide a holistic account of women performers in India. Archival photographs—some of which have never been published before—make it a collector’s item.