Art, through creative impulse and resonating with our shared truths, builds bridges of expression and resonance. United by common origins and ambitions, artists work towards a common goal in their own unique ways.?
Theatre has long been a tool for social change around the world. Guernica, Picasso's painting, was alone responsible for drawing the world's attention to Spain and its civil conflict.
Closser home, Savarna reformers used mythology and classical literature-based theatre to raise nationalist consciousness during the anti-colonial struggle. Indian theatre itself has a long history of activism and resistance.?
Theatre has provided a platform, for people to communicate with each other at the community level, from anti-British narratives during the freedom fight to articulating the challenges of marginalised castes and communities.
Anil de Silva, a journalist from Bangalore, pioneered Indian women's participation into the cultural arts, with the goal of utilising this momentum to form a unified people's theatre movement. Thus, the Indian People¡¯s Theatre Association (IPTA) was born.
Though IPTA's theatre movements made an early attempt to improve women's conditions in the socio-cultural field, the goal has gradually shifted to national interests, and as a result, women's issues in the domestic sphere have been disregarded. However, after a brief pause, this oversight has been redressed, thanks to the efforts of a number of organisations interested in bringing the women's agenda and problems to the public's attention through street theatre.
Feminist theatre intervenes in societal assumptions about identity, dismantles binaries, and creates equality as an alternative not only to the male gaze but also to the normative gaze.
Here, the production and writing are characterized by women's consciousness of themselves as women. Transformation is used as a structural and ideological alternative for the recognition and construction of female characters in the subject position in both scripting and production. It's dramaturgy, in which art is inseparably linked to the condition of women as women; performances (both written and performed) that deconstruct sexual disparities and thereby challenge patriarchal power.?
Street theatre had emerged as a powerful medium for emphasising women's issues and an exclusive platform for female audiences to react to the related issues. It was an intimate means of disclosing and connecting the lives of female audiences, as well as sharing their viewpoint with the rest of the globe. A performance about eve-teasing (directed by Tripurari Sharma) that was performed at colleges only by women participants is an example of this. As a result, these plays acted as devices for bringing out and evolving a woman's perspective.
In the 1970s, feminist theatre narratives emerged in several towns and cities across India, as a response to male-centric discourses and traditions in rural theatre. Hence, Indian feminist theatre is defined by its subversion of male-dominated narratives and focus on concerns of female and other marginalised identities, rather than by a specific language or theatrical history.
Socially relevant theatre and the women's movement began to illustrate the way forward in the charged atmosphere of the mid- to late-1970s. Theatre allowed for the expression and acceptance of a lot of tabooed issues. Women's issues, in a large way, entered the Indian theatre scene during the 1980s and 1990s.?
Initially, feminist theatre flourished in India's cities and towns, particularly in non-commercial locations. Safdar Hashmi's Jan Natya Manch (People's Theatre Front, founded in 1973) staged the agitprop street play--Aurat (Women, 1979), which addressed topics such as bride burning, dowry, and wife abuse.?
Swarnakumari Devi, Rabindranath Tagore's sister, wrote The Wedding Tangle, which explored the agency of a woman in the light of larger issues like class struggle and widow marriage. The play explores intersectional topics, such as how some identities are more privileged over others.
It was thrilling because it dared to go public with such a wide range of female representations and explanations that it attracted a new audience to the theatre.
Many female authors carved out prominent places for themselves in the genres of fiction and poetry during the nineteenth century, but the theatre remained mostly restricted to them. In this respect, there has been a significant shift in the last twenty years or so. The Indian theatre is no longer a male-dominated realm. Women directors, who were formerly uncommon, have come to the fore.
The Feminist Movement's values are increasingly making their presence felt in the work of contemporary artists. Mallika Taneja's important work 'Thoda Dhyaan se' uses nudity to tackle the patriarchal gaze. Kalyanee Mulay's performance 'UnSeen' is a response to historical sexism. Mangai's collection of essays about staging gender in India, is another example.
Today, feminist theatre is formally acknowledged as a distinct form of theatre in India, with its history and theory published in scholarly journals. Women's narratives have been preserved through the publication of books and anthologies, which have been translated into various languages to ensure a wider audience.
The growth in female centric storytelling not only provided a different insight on women¡¯s issues than male voices on the same topics, but also a more authentic depiction of women, their daily lives, sexuality and desire, and interactions with other women.?
As a result, a new type of audience emerged, one that was interested in women's issues and were often themselves women. Besides expressing women's issues, the feminist theatre movement is also about encouraging more women to enter the field of theatre as creators, writers, and artists.
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