Staging Resistance: Plays by Women in Translation (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Staging Resistance: Plays by Women in Translation Charlotte McIvor Staging Resistance: Plays by Women in Translation. Edited by Tutun Mukherjee . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005; pp. 564. $35.00 cloth. A definition of the contemporary "Indian theatre" is impossible to find. Theatre in India, as anywhere else, is driven by political, popular, religious, and aesthetic concerns, although many Indian theatre and dance forms such as kathakali and Chhau dance have continuous histories of training practices and performance repertoires that have evolved over hundreds of years. The modern Indian theatre developed during the nineteenth century and was influenced by European forms, a consequence of the British colonial presence and its effects on Indian culture. These ongoing effects of Western theatre can be seen in a long-standing interest in European playwrights (e.g., Shakespeare and Brecht) and theatrical forms (e.g., realism). These influences, however, have varied regionally and operated to serve both subversive and hegemonic agendas. Many postcolonial Indian theatre artists worked toward a national theatre that reflected the problematic nature of India's newfound unity and sought to combine Western influences with a syncretic blend of indigenous Indian theatre traditions. Others strove to entirely resist the incursion of Western forms and culture so as to heal the wounds of colonialism. Postcolonial Indian theatre's regional differences and relationship to Western forms do not translate into a pan-Indian performance aesthetic that is legible to contemporary Indian audiences or other global spectators. Nevertheless, Tutun Mukherjee's collection of plays, Staging Resistance: Plays by Women in Translation, attempts a survey of the contemporary Indian theatre through a focus on the work of women in theatre. She argues that while postcolonial Indian drama has grown "more varied, rich [End Page 533] and diverse both in content and semiotics," it has still largely ignored "women's experiences" (10). Her collection attempts to correct this absence by gathering eighteen plays from women playwrights throughout India. From Hindi playwright Tripurari Sharma's tale of a courtesan who dares to become a soldier and fight the British during the 1857 Sipahi revolt in A Tale from the Year 1857: Azizun Nisa to the reenvisioned story of the prototypical good wife Sita who comes to stand in for all the women of the audience in Tamil writer C. S. Lakshmi's (pseudonym, Ambai) Crossing the River, these innovative plays span thousands of years and exemplify a range of styles in dramatic form and genre and, like Mukherjee's understanding of the larger trends within Indian theatre itself, draw upon "myths, history, folklore, politics, society, and quotidian life for material" (10). The contributors range from theatre professionals (Tripurari Sharma, Varsha Aldalja) to professional writers (Swarnakumari Devi, Majit Pal Kuar) to academics (Mamta Sagar, Arasu Mangai), and most often they are a combination of all three. Retellings of mythology or epic stories are a big theme in this volume. Nabaneeta Dev Sen's Medea transports the classic Greek tragedy to a train station and graciously grants Medea a case of amnesia and Jason a heart, and Neelam Mansingh Chowdhury's Fida takes a cue from Euripides' Hippolyta and Racine's Phèdre as well as a Punjabi folktale in telling the story of a lustful queen who brings destruction upon those around her. These and many other plays in the volume revolve around themes of desire, domesticity, the place of the wife in the home, and marriage. Hindi playwright Kusum Kumar's Listen Shefali is a particularly nuanced piece about a young woman who resists offers of marriage from the man she loves despite his higher social status because of her doubts about his sincerity. She finally loses him to her younger sister and the play ends with a voice behind the curtain stating: "Thus written are the chronicles of cowards each day." The audience is left to wonder who is truly the coward: Shefali, who resisted the insincerity of those around her and was left with pain, or those who betrayed her? The poetic lyricism of Majit Pal Kuar's Sundran is another standout in this volume with its exquisite use of verse in recounting a tale of tragic and barely requited love between a holy...