Feminist Readings of Space, Body, and Performance: An Overview of Emerging Feminist Theatre in India

Abstract

The theatre has been an amalgamation of history, society, and its representation where it connects with the audience directly. It has been a medium of resistance, protest, and entertainment and a cultural and social tradition in various countries. This paper is an analytical study of feminist theatre and its nuances, showing that theatre, which has been used as a mode to protest and resist, becomes a tool to reclaim and re-own space and body for women. It is essential to theorize Feminist Theatre so that its congruency can be established with the socio-cultural and historical paradigm. All the genres that were written to stabilize feminist thought in the discourse fell back on the conventional praxis of mythology and other texts. For example, Indian narratives borrowed feminine tropes from the classical texts whether it was Rabindranath Tagore or Girish Karnad, women were phenomenal yet subdued. Hence, when men wrote women, there was always a hint of “othering” the female gender in these write-ups; there was always a moralistic judgment of these women. Thus, this study is an attempt to theorize women playwrights and feminist performances that have made an attempt to pave the way for feminist scholarships and feminist theatres to evolve.