Interrogating modernity, gendering 'tradition': Teatr tales from Goa

Abstract

This paper examines the teatr, a form of popular theatre in contemporary Goa, and the ways in which it engages with the modern, defining and 'fixing', in the same moment, a particular variant of 'tradition'. The plays of this genre revolve around questions of moder nity. In a complex articulation of the realms of the global and the local, modern culture, social mores, politics and economics, tourism and the global media are all represented, queried, even critiqued. Simultaneously, tradition, gender and family relations are viewed as requiring protection from the harmful effects of the modern. Thus, we are offered a par ticularly glorified representation of the 'traditional' Goan woman and her immurement in the family. Scholars studying cinema, theatre and the arts have spoken of similar construc tions elsewhere. Given their pervasiveness, the temptation to read these constructions as constituting a homogeneous dominant ideology are great. However, while the teatrs contain women within tradition, there are ruptures and moments when different ideas and voices surface. The paper argues that these moments are worth holding as traces of alternative, though suppressed, models, and as reminders of what the dominant ideology has to counter in establishing and maintaining its heyemony.