Making of ‘Modern’ Theatre and Actresses’ Question: Negotiation and Contestation

Abstract

Theatre was an important representation site of the burgeoning middle class during the colonial period in its search for cultural identity. ‘Modern’ theatre of the middle class was linked up with its quest for respectability and the question of respectability assumed its sharpest form when the issues concerned women. The politics of social class, gendered ideologies and nationalism permeating the theatre space came to construct the female performer/actress as the ‘other’ of the domesticated, ‘pure’ and ‘spiritual’ middle class women. The paper looks at the construction of actresses as the ‘other’ in the middle class discourse. For the actresses despite their tremendous artistic talent, all evidences of respectability were ruled out. The actresses’ lives were indicative of the contradictions of a new world of middle class cultural production. The paper also makes an attempt to move beyond the paradigm of respectability discourse by fore-fronting the other identities of the actresses, which hitherto has not received scholarly attention. The whole middle class respectability discourse by invisibilizing the other identities of actresses forecloses their struggles and contestations.