Performing Silence
Women in the Group Theatre Movement in Bengal
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ISBN:
9780190127701
Publication date:
20/10/2021
Hardback
384 pages
216x138mm
Price: 1795.00 INR
We sell our titles through other companies
Disclaimer :You will be redirected to a third party website.The sole responsibility of supplies, condition of the product, availability of stock, date of delivery, mode of payment will be as promised by the said third party only. Prices and specifications may vary from the OUP India site.
ISBN:
9780190127701
Publication date:
20/10/2021
Hardback
384 pages
Trina Nileena Banerjee
This book addresses the absence of a sustained and critical engagement with the gender politics of the group theatre movement, by looking at the difficult negotiations of a 'movement' that self-consciously fashions itself as a leftist cultural enterprise with questions of gender and sexuality. It endeavours to do so by studying the movement in two different ways, it examines both the aesthetic representations of women on stage and the actual participation of women as cultural activists in the movement.
Rights: World Rights
Trina Nileena Banerjee
Description
The political history of women in the group theatre in Bengal centres on a movement that was in no way cohesive. It had neither a ‘manifesto’ nor a unified aesthetic impulse, being composed of many separate and conflicting articulations of political intention. A few critical works and (auto)biographies of actresses attend to gender questions in tangential ways, but a sustained and critical engagement with the gender politics of the organizational structures and practices of the group theatre movement as a whole has not yet been undertaken. This book begins to address that absence by looking at the difficult negotiations of a movement, which self-consciously fashioned itself as a leftist cultural enterprise, with questions of gender and sexuality. It examines the aesthetic representations of women on stage, as well as their participation as cultural activists in the movement.
About the author
TRINA NILEENA BANERJEE is currently Assistant Professor in Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Her essays have been published in several edited volumes and national/international journals. She writes in both Bengali and English. Her research interests include Gender, Performance, Political Theatre, Theories of the Body, Postcolonial Theatre and South Asian History.
Trina Nileena Banerjee
Table of contents
1. Performance, Autonomy and the Politics of the Marginal: An Introduction.
1.1. Pre-history: The 'People-Nation' and Bengali Theatre in the 1940s.
1.2. What Kind of History?
1.3. Mapping the Field.
1.4. Politics, Women and Theatre: New Questions?
1.5. The Chapters
2. Chapter One: The IPTA: The Problematic of Desire and Control in Cultural Action (1943-1955).
2.1. Contingent Solidarities: The Formation and Trajectory of the IPTA.
2.2. The Performance of History and Desire: The Case of Anil De Silva.
3. Chapter Two: The Father Figures: Paternalism, Nation and the Emerging Model of the Group Theatres in the Fifties (1950-1961).
3.1. The Bhadramahila Actress as Citizen-wife: Bahurupi in the 1950s.
3.2. Ritwik Ghatak's Komal Gandhar (1961): Woman and the Vanguard Community
3.3. A Doll's Playhouse: Sambhu Mitra's Putul Khela (1958).
4. Chapter Three: The Politics of the Labouring Body and an Emerging Feminist Consciousness: Keya Chakraborty and Nandikar (1960-1977).
4.1. Keya Chakraborty: the Bhadramahila as 'Professional' Actress.
4.2. Setting the Scene: Unemployment and Women's Labour in 1960s Calcutta.
4.3. The Bhadramahila-Actress and the Lost Labour of Love.
5. Chapter Four: Spectacles of Freedom and Misogyny: Building Towards Emergency (1965-1978).
5.1. Utpal Dutt and the Gender of Revolution: Kallol, Angar, Teer (1959-1967).
5.2. The Emergency: Leadership, Deification, Monstrosity.
5.3. Dramaturgy and Performance Space in Sambhu Mitra's Chandbaniker Pala (1978): Misogyny, Heroic Masculinity and the Allegory of a Failed Nation
6. Chapter Five: Nandikar's Antigone: Agency, Autonomy or Sacrifice? (1975-1977)
6.1. The Actress and her Refusal
6.2. Sophocles, Anouilh and the Face of the State?
6.3. Theatre, Efficacy and Unwitnessed Death: Calcutta in the Emergency.
7. Conclusion: Abortive Possibilities and New Directions (1970-1990)
7.1. In a Benevolent Shadow: The Changing Landscape of Bengali Theatre (1977-1990).
7.2. 'Swan Song?': Tripti Mitra, Aparajita and the Arabdha Natya Bidyalay (1970-1989).
Trina Nileena Banerjee
Description
The political history of women in the group theatre in Bengal centres on a movement that was in no way cohesive. It had neither a ‘manifesto’ nor a unified aesthetic impulse, being composed of many separate and conflicting articulations of political intention. A few critical works and (auto)biographies of actresses attend to gender questions in tangential ways, but a sustained and critical engagement with the gender politics of the organizational structures and practices of the group theatre movement as a whole has not yet been undertaken. This book begins to address that absence by looking at the difficult negotiations of a movement, which self-consciously fashioned itself as a leftist cultural enterprise, with questions of gender and sexuality. It examines the aesthetic representations of women on stage, as well as their participation as cultural activists in the movement.
About the author
TRINA NILEENA BANERJEE is currently Assistant Professor in Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Her essays have been published in several edited volumes and national/international journals. She writes in both Bengali and English. Her research interests include Gender, Performance, Political Theatre, Theories of the Body, Postcolonial Theatre and South Asian History.
Table of contents
1. Performance, Autonomy and the Politics of the Marginal: An Introduction.
1.1. Pre-history: The 'People-Nation' and Bengali Theatre in the 1940s.
1.2. What Kind of History?
1.3. Mapping the Field.
1.4. Politics, Women and Theatre: New Questions?
1.5. The Chapters
2. Chapter One: The IPTA: The Problematic of Desire and Control in Cultural Action (1943-1955).
2.1. Contingent Solidarities: The Formation and Trajectory of the IPTA.
2.2. The Performance of History and Desire: The Case of Anil De Silva.
3. Chapter Two: The Father Figures: Paternalism, Nation and the Emerging Model of the Group Theatres in the Fifties (1950-1961).
3.1. The Bhadramahila Actress as Citizen-wife: Bahurupi in the 1950s.
3.2. Ritwik Ghatak's Komal Gandhar (1961): Woman and the Vanguard Community
3.3. A Doll's Playhouse: Sambhu Mitra's Putul Khela (1958).
4. Chapter Three: The Politics of the Labouring Body and an Emerging Feminist Consciousness: Keya Chakraborty and Nandikar (1960-1977).
4.1. Keya Chakraborty: the Bhadramahila as 'Professional' Actress.
4.2. Setting the Scene: Unemployment and Women's Labour in 1960s Calcutta.
4.3. The Bhadramahila-Actress and the Lost Labour of Love.
5. Chapter Four: Spectacles of Freedom and Misogyny: Building Towards Emergency (1965-1978).
5.1. Utpal Dutt and the Gender of Revolution: Kallol, Angar, Teer (1959-1967).
5.2. The Emergency: Leadership, Deification, Monstrosity.
5.3. Dramaturgy and Performance Space in Sambhu Mitra's Chandbaniker Pala (1978): Misogyny, Heroic Masculinity and the Allegory of a Failed Nation
6. Chapter Five: Nandikar's Antigone: Agency, Autonomy or Sacrifice? (1975-1977)
6.1. The Actress and her Refusal
6.2. Sophocles, Anouilh and the Face of the State?
6.3. Theatre, Efficacy and Unwitnessed Death: Calcutta in the Emergency.
7. Conclusion: Abortive Possibilities and New Directions (1970-1990)
7.1. In a Benevolent Shadow: The Changing Landscape of Bengali Theatre (1977-1990).
7.2. 'Swan Song?': Tripti Mitra, Aparajita and the Arabdha Natya Bidyalay (1970-1989).
Marvin Carlson
Nishat Zaidi, Premchand
The Theatre of Veenapani Chawla
Shanta Gokhale
Brahma Prakash
Poetics, Plays, and Performances
Vasudha Dalmia
Performing Women - Performing Womanhood
Nandi Bhatia
