Activist theatre and Theatre Activism: Feminist negotiations in Indian Theatre

<strong>CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF LAW AND GOVERNANCE Jawaharlal Nehru University</strong> SEMINAR SERIES <strong>A. MANGAI (Padma Venkataraman) </strong> Associate Professor, Stella Maris College, Chennai Visiting Faculty, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, JNU on <strong>Activist theatre and Theatre Activism: Feminist negotiations in Indian Theatre</strong> <strong>11 March 2016</strong> The problem confronted by cultural politics around gender, like other movements, is the question of 'cultural activism or activist culture'. In other words, this debate is a continuing one and another manifestation of content and form dialectic. I wish to argue that addressing social issues through theatre can also constantly negotiate the modes of presentation without resorting to simple exhortation of subscribing to the 'politically correct' slogans. Similarly, one can not underestimate the inroads made by women directors like Saoli Mitra, Sushma Deshpande or Tripurari Sharma and the like in working with women who practice traditional forms or Anuradha Kapur's brilliant reading of the convention of female impersonation in Sundari. The canvass of how women have negotiated with form and content is vast. Underlining these negotiations is a gendered mode of perception, probably pushed to the front by the feminist discourses spearheaded by women's movements. The paper hopes to let the two strands of gendered theatre practice 'converse' with each other. And to do a gendered reading of these two aspects, one has to 'unlearn' the very aesthetic yardsticks of art practice and criticism. <strong>ABOUT THE SPEAKER: </strong>A. Mangai is the pseudonym of Dr. Padma Venkataraman, who teaches English at Stella Maris College, Chennai. She has been actively engaged in the field of theatre in Tamil for over three decades now. She is a translator and writes bilingually in Tamil and English. She has translated Therigatha – Psalms of Elder Buddhist Nuns from Pali via English to Tamil. She has also translated theoretical works like Decolonising the Mind by Ngugi Wa Thiongo, and Very Short Introductions (OUP) on Postcolonialism and Fascism into Tamil. Her monograph on Krithika, one of the pioneering woman writers in Tamil, was published by Sahitya Akademi. Her Acting Up: Gender and Theatre in India, 1979 onwards was published by Leftword (2015).