Performing Spaces: Staging Resistance, Gendered Cartographies and Self

Abstract

The paper aims to explore the self in different performative spaces, which includes theatre, dance, music, and posters. In doing so it tends to analyze how the “spaces” are being refilled by defining the “hidden narratives” of the self through performances. The performances are not just for entertainment rather the aim is to expose the hidden spaces of the society where bodies with pride are produced. The spaces are liberating and empowering in nature through which multiple narratives are perceived, conceived and lived. Considering performative space as a space where gender binaries can be unsettled, the work reveals how certain performances bolster one to rethink about the social conventions of gender. The performative body becomes a medium through which the idea of self, sexuality, space, gender, and culture can be looked upon. The body experiencing the sense of ‘homelessness’ within its own being goes into the quest for the discovery of the self, which is underlined with an expression of anger against the pseudo codifications of systems, thus authenticating change. The paper provides discourse on how performative spaces have become a product of change. To this end, the paper unravels how performances “fill in the blanks” and explores the wider dynamics of space including public, private, and mental spaces and how the outer spaces influence inner spaces.