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Feminist Processes and Performance: Interventions in Anamika Haksar's Antar Yatra

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2018

INDU JAIN
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Abstract

Since independence, theatre in India has been touted as a platform to foster a sense of national community and exhibit the ideal citizen. The new theatre, and official cultural-policy documents since independence, prescribed ways to become an ideal citizen–actor of a new nation's cultural manifestation. A conscious modification and disruption of the post-independence national canon, as I argue in this essay, came in the late 1980s from a group of teachers and directors with a gendered sensibility. The essay will focus on the unique performance and theatre-making processes of these women directors, with Anamika Haksar's Antar Yatra being the case study. The question it will raise is, how successful was Haksar in decentring the various hierarchies? Could her collaborative work engage her students as co-creators of knowledge rather than as citizens created out of hegemonic pedagogy, conditioned by the state's national identity politics?

Type
Essays: Pedagogies of Citizenship: Performance, Institutions and Gendering
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , October 2017 , pp. 333 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2018 

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References

NOTES

1 Chatterjee, Partha, ‘Theatre and the Publics of Democracy’, Theatre Research International, 41, 3 (2016), pp. 202–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 208.

2 Kapur, Anuradha, ‘A Wandering Word, an Unstable Subject’, Theatre India, 3, (May 2001), pp. 5–12 Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., p. 10.

4 Bhargava Dharwadkar, Aparna, Theatres of Independence: Drama, Theory and Urban Performance in India since 1947 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

5 Alkazi, E., ‘The Training of the Actor’ (First Drama Seminar (III), 1956), Sangeet Natak, 28, 4 (2004), pp. 77–86 Google Scholar.

6 See, for example, Allana, Amal, The Theatre of E. Alkazi: A Modernist Approach to Indian Theatre (New Delhi: Art Heritage, 2016)Google Scholar.

7 Girish Karnad, ‘Drama with a Distinct Vision’, The Hindu, 25 November 2007.

8 These faculty members are Anuradha Kapur, Anamika Haksar, Maya Rao and Kirti Jain.

9 My method of reconstructing Antar Yatra has been through looking at the production recordings, interaction with her (in a series of personal interviews conducted in October 2016 at her residence in Mumbai), photographs of the performances, and newspaper reviews. See, for example, (1) Ashish Sharma, ‘The Search Within’, Indian Express, 30 April 1995; (2) Anamika Haksar, interview with Nikhil Mishra, ‘I was very shy: Anamika Haksar’, Kashmir Times, 25 October 1997; Jammu edition.

10 See Kapur, Anuradha, ‘Reassembling the Modern: An Indian Theatre Map since Independence’, in Bhatia, Nandi, ed., Modern Indian Theatre: A Reader (Delhi: Oxford Univerity Press, 2009), pp. 41–55Google Scholar.

11 Dalmia, Vasudha, Poetics, Plays, and Performances: The Politics of Modern Indian Theatre (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

12 The students are Dr Ratna Panikar, Anusha Lal, Mridul Barua, Bhagirathi and Aditi Jaitley.

13 Author interview, Ratna Panikar, 2016. She played the role of one of the choric singers in Antar Yatra.

14 Antar Yatra, dir. Anamika Haksar, Nirakar Productions, 1993.

15 Author interview, October 2016, Mumbai.

16 The Alvar saints (south India) are known for their affiliation to the Shrivaishnava tradition of Hinduism.

17 Mangai, A., Acting Up: Gender and Theatre in India, 1979 Onwards (Delhi: Leftworld, 2015), p. 192.Google Scholar

18 Kolam is a form of drawing on the floor in Tamil Nadu using rice flour or chalk powder.

19 See Abhilash Pillai's Island of Blood, 2002. Abhilash Pillai is a student of Haksar, who now is a faculty member at the NSD. In his play Island of Blood (2002) one can see the breakthrough innovative methodology, seeds of which are from Haksar's training and pedagogic vocabulary that Abhilash Pillai benefitted from.

20 See Gargi, Balwant, Theatre in India (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1962)Google Scholar; Lal, Anand, The Oxford Companion to Indian Theatre (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.