Protesting Violence: Feminist Performance Activism in Contemporary India

Abstract

Bishnupria Dutt returns to the violent events of 16 December 2012, when a young woman, Jyoti Singh, was brutally gang raped in Delhi, India, and later died from her injuries. Dutt examines the popular mass protests and live street performances that followed, especially those by Maya Rayo and Jana Natya Manch (People’s Theatre Front), who have long histories of feminist and leftist activism. Dutt compares these performances with another representation of the Delhi rape events, the commercially successful play Nirbhaya, which toured the major cities of India in 2015. Dutt concludes that as a product of the neoliberal creative economy, Nirbhaya reproduced the hegemonic discourse around rape and failed to capture the immediacy and feminist affect of participatory street protest.