Performing Silence
Women in the Group Theatre Movement in Bengal
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ISBN:
9780190127701
Publication date:
20/10/2021
Hardback
444 pages
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
444 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 book attempts a sustained and critical engagement with one of the most crucial issues of the group theatre movement: gender politics. 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. Women's self-fashioning vis-à-vis this engagement, which was often seen not just as a creative-artistic but a political participation, was coloured by several factors. These included the operation of implicitly gendered hierarchies within the internal organization of the groups, as well as certain modalities of language and action that frequently succeeded in making women's concerns unintelligible within the movement. The primary intention of this work is to tease out the possible schisms between the announced egalitarian ideology of the movement, reflected ever so often in the radical revisionings of gender roles and hierarchies on stage, and the actual workings of the groups themselves, where women continued, throughout this period, to occupy marginal and largely silent positions.
About the Author:
Trina Nileena Banerjee is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. She was a Guest Faculty at the Theatre and Performance Studies Department, School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU, New Delhi (August 2011 to May 2013) and a Visiting Fellow at the School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies, University of Warwick, UK (April 2012 to May 2012). Trina was awarded her PhD in 2013 (JU), Master of Studies in English in 2005 (St. Anne's College, University of Oxford), and her MA (Gold Medallist) in English in 2003 (JU).
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
Trina Nileena Banerjee
Description
The book attempts a sustained and critical engagement with one of the most crucial issues of the group theatre movement: gender politics. 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. Women's self-fashioning vis-à-vis this engagement, which was often seen not just as a creative-artistic but a political participation, was coloured by several factors. These included the operation of implicitly gendered hierarchies within the internal organization of the groups, as well as certain modalities of language and action that frequently succeeded in making women's concerns unintelligible within the movement. The primary intention of this work is to tease out the possible schisms between the announced egalitarian ideology of the movement, reflected ever so often in the radical revisionings of gender roles and hierarchies on stage, and the actual workings of the groups themselves, where women continued, throughout this period, to occupy marginal and largely silent positions.
About the Author:
Trina Nileena Banerjee is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. She was a Guest Faculty at the Theatre and Performance Studies Department, School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU, New Delhi (August 2011 to May 2013) and a Visiting Fellow at the School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies, University of Warwick, UK (April 2012 to May 2012). Trina was awarded her PhD in 2013 (JU), Master of Studies in English in 2005 (St. Anne's College, University of Oxford), and her MA (Gold Medallist) in English in 2003 (JU).
Read MoreTable 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).
