These two works on Indian theatre appear at a time when countercultural discourse is itself becoming canonical – hegemonic in its approach, and alienating in its language. For instance, the middle-class feminist discourses on ‘actresses’ ignored not only the question of caste and labour but also that of class other than itself. Most of these discourses were also presented in binary terms: colonizers–colonized, elite–subaltern, urban–rural, modern–traditional, classical–folk; their interplays were simply overlooked. Lata Singh's proposition to go beyond middle-class ‘respectability’ and recognize ‘actress as an artist and worker’ is a radical intervention in Indian theatre scholarship (p. 270).
The book includes thirteen brilliant articles from six Indian states, encapsulating text, archive, ethnography and performance. Its potential rests in the diverse range it takes (from Tamil Kattaikkuttu girls to English actresses on the Indian stage), the questions it addresses (gender, caste, class, ethnicity, language), the methodologies it suggests (writing theatre history/criticisms through ‘musical codes’ to ‘drama notices’), the performers it includes (Nautanki's Gulab Bai to IPTA's Sheila Bhatia) and the possibilities it shows for the future discourses (interplays of marginal identities). Bhirdikar analyses ‘musical code’ to understand ‘social code’ (public taste) in Marathi theatre. Bandopadhyay suggests an innovative way to write theatre history through the structure of performance – concert, stage-setting, and act. Mangai and Arasu construct the history of Tamil theatre through drama notices. They argue that drama notices do not only tell the story of theatre but also tell us about ‘the attitude of society towards the participation of dalits’ and about women as audiences (p. 116). Through her engagement with Kattaikkuttu performers, de Bruin argues that the image of middle-class women, constructed during the colonial period, continues to make its impact on the position of rural women performers even today. Rege extends this debate to Lavani and Powada performance in Maharashtra. Unlike other scholars in this book, she gives a different dimension to the actress stories. While tracing the history of lavani, a lower-caste performance, she explains how lavani, as ‘an expression of the everyday desire’ of common people (‘including sexual’), became reduced to a performance ‘satiating male desire’ in the upper-caste court (p. 135).
One of the most relevant entries in this volume is an article from Manipur, the state which has remained besieged by the Indian state with draconian laws like the Armed Forces Special Power Acts (AFPSA). Imokanta Singh discusses two types of cultural colonization – upper-caste Hindu colonization in which Sanskrit and Bangala became the hegemonic language and Bengali bhadraloks (upper-caste elites) ‘tried to impose patriarchy’ on Manipuri theatre, and the British colonization (p. 231). Another interesting entry is Dutt's essay on the English actress, in which she examines the way English actresses became part of ‘the Oriental landscape’ (p. 318).
If Play-House of Power lays down a broader framework, then Performing Women, Performing Womanhood is as examination of women performers from North India. The latter draws from the former in terms of material and framework. Extending the debate to Indian popular cinema, Performing Women argues that if the discourse of female actresses in India is that of middle-class ideal women, then it is also a discourse of those women who, from the ‘borderline of dominant theatrical activity’, not only contested middle-class codes but also showed a radical vision for gender and theatre (p. xix).
Divided into five chapters, chapter 1 discusses the image of middle-class women in literature and cinema. Premchand's The Actress, and two Hindi movies – Teesri Kasam (1966) and Main Madhuri Dixit Banna Chahti Hun (2003) – present an ambivalent image of the actress in which morality stands in negotiation with the material context of life. Chapter 2 examines the works of two middle-class women playwrights – Rasheed Jahan and Ismat Chugtai – as argumentative women who not only confronted domesticity but also challenged religious communalism and colonialism through their plays. Chapter 3 explores the tragedy and trauma of, and recuperation from, partition through the personnel narratives and performances of two women theatre activists, Zohra Segal and Sheila Bhatia. The chapter invokes memory, displacement, nationalism, religiosity and violence against women and their connection to theatre and performance. Finally, the last two chapters deal with the works of two contemporary women directors, Kusum Kumar and Tripurari Sharma.
Despite the success of both these books, some questions and concerns remain. In most of the chapters, the scholarship has failed to see the interplays and interrelationships between gender and caste, which is ‘the central factor for the subordination of the [Indian] upper caste [middle-class] women’ (Uma Chakarvarti, ‘Conceptualising Brahmanical Patriarchy in Early India: Gender, Caste, Class and State’, Economic and Political Weekly, 28 (April 1993), pp. 579–585, here p. 579) – because the representation of Indian middle-class women is less about the representation of women or womanhood and more about that of upper-caste values through women. Any discourse on gender in India simply cannot ignore the interplays of caste and class. Caste should not become a focus only in relation to lower-caste performances; rather caste needs to be seen as a constitutive element of gender.
The historiocization of actresses’ questions, along with caste and labour, may give a completely different picture to the present discourse, as it appears in Rege's essay. Perhaps it is for this reason that in both these books there is an uncritical appreciation of court culture. Recent scholarly research shows that colonialism (in India) did not destroy all existing traditional hierarchal relationship of caste, class and gender; rather it saw feudalism and aristocracy as its allies. Another criticism alludes to the importance of text. Text still constitutes the major source of both these books. The authors should have also engaged more with artistic and aesthetic aspects, and the inclusion of more illustrations would enhance these publications. In spite of these minor criticisms and limitations, both these books make a significant contribution to Indian theatre and performance and are also important in terms of interdisciplinary research.
