Feminist Processes and Performance: Interventions in Anamika Haksar's Antar Yatra

Abstract

Since independence, theatre in India has been touted as a platform to foster a sense of national community and exhibit the ideal citizen. The new theatre, and official cultural-policy documents since independence, prescribed ways to become an ideal citizen–actor of a new nation's cultural manifestation. A conscious modification and disruption of the post-independence national canon, as I argue in this essay, came in the late 1980s from a group of teachers and directors with a gendered sensibility. The essay will focus on the unique performance and theatre-making processes of these women directors, with Anamika Haksar's Antar Yatra being the case study. The question it will raise is, how successful was Haksar in decentring the various hierarchies? Could her collaborative work engage her students as co-creators of knowledge rather than as citizens created out of hegemonic pedagogy, conditioned by the state's national identity politics?