The Pedagogic and the Performative in Indian Theatre

Beschreibung

Indu Jain's book is both theoretically sophisticated and historically comprehensive in its analysis of Feminist theatre artists’ interventions into Indian theatre writing, process, and pedagogy. Focusing on four outstanding women theatre practitioners who became powerful leaders in the critique and revision of the postcolonial Indian theatre landscape, Jain stakes out a strong claim for an imaginative disruption of the hegemonic based on interconnected sets of relationships, an unsettling of semiotic certainties, an emphasis on the body as expressive polyvocality, and pedagogic collaboration with students that empowered a further younger generation to create their own theatre ecology. This book is beautifully written, intelligently argued, and well-illustrated with a wealth of research including treating former students of the main women artists as ‘informed mediators’. This book will be important and influential in shaping how other nations’ theatre histories revise and interfere with previously traditional narratives, and will inspire feminist scholars to reconsider earlier understandings of women’s interventions and disruptions of the status quo while also existing alongside them.

– Janelle Reinelt Professor Emerita, University of Warwick

This book foregrounds the realm of Contemporary Indian Feminist Theatre in order to explore the inter-relationships between feminist theatrical theory, practice and its historical antecedents. The study focuses on the performance processes, training methods and pedagogical vocabulary used by four Indian women directors: Anamika Haksar, Anuradha Kapur, Kirti Jain and Tripurari Sharma. The book interprets the feminist emphasis on process as extended into actor training and rehearsal dynamics, investigating its innovations as well as limitations, while examining how successful these director-pedagogues were in bringing gendered and radical feminist sensibilities to their work in classroom spaces.

Indu Jain is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Janki Devi Memorial College, Delhi University, India. Indu’s research interests include post-colonial theory and literature, feminist theory, and performance studies. Previous publications include several book chapters and articles published in international journals like Theatre Research International and Studies in Theatre and Performance.

This book foregrounds the realm of Contemporary Indian Feminist Theatre in order to explore the inter-relationships between feminist theatrical theory, practice and its historical antecedents. The study focuses on the performance processes, training methods and pedagogical vocabulary used by four Indian women directors: Anamika Haksar, Anuradha Kapur, Kirti Jain and Tripurari Sharma. The book interprets the feminist emphasis on process as extended into actor training and rehearsal dynamics, investigating its innovations as well as limitations, while examining how successful these director-pedagogues were in bringing gendered and radical feminist sensibilities to their work in classroom spaces.

Autor*in

Indu Jain

Themen in »The Pedagogic and the Performative in Indian Theatre«

Indian Feminist Theatre Theatre Pedagogy Performance Theory Theatre Historiography Theatre and Politics Anuradha Kapur Anamika Haksar Tripurari Sharma Kirti Jain

Stimmen zu »The Pedagogic and the Performative in Indian Theatre«

“Indu Jain's book is both theoretically sophisticated and historically comprehensive in its analysis of Feminist theatre artists’ interventions into Indian theatre writing, process, and pedagogy. Focusing on four outstanding women theatre practitioners, Jain stakes out a strong claim for an imaginative disruption of the hegemonic based on interconnected sets of relationships, an unsettling of semiotic certainties, an emphasis on the body as expressive polyvocality, and pedagogic collaboration with students that empowered a further younger generation to create their own theatre ecology. This book is beautifully written, intelligently argued, and well-illustrated with a wealth of research, including treating former students of the main women artists as ‘informed mediators’. This book will be important and influential in shaping how other nations’ theatre histories revise and interfere with previously traditional narratives, and will inspire feminist scholars to reconsider earlier understandings of women’s interventions and disruptions of the status quo while also existing alongside them.” (Janelle Reinelt Professor Emerita, University of Warwick)

“Indu Jain’s extraordinary new book, The Pedagogic and the Performative in Indian Theatre: Negotiations of a Feminist Collaborative Imagination, is exemplary of new feminist scholarship on theatre and performance, offering an engaging contextual analysis of the work of prominent Indian feminist theater practitioners—namely Anamika Haksar, Anuradha Kapur, Kirti Jain, and Tripurari Sharma—which eschews conventional linear, individual-centered histories and instead explores the networks of influence and dynamics of rupture and dislocation that characterize the powerful arc of their practice, theory, and teaching. In Jain’s rendering, their feminist pedagogy and performance strategies are characterized by collectivity, ensemble work, and affective alliances, as well as the creation of new critical idioms and gendered stage language grounded in corporeality. Modelling the best of feminist critical approaches, Jain makes a decisive contribution to our understanding of the recent history of Indian theatre and the transformative role of women theater directors therein.” (Jill Lane is Associate Professor of Spanish & Portuguese and of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University, USA)

“This exciting new study of women’s theatre practice in India makes an important contribution to the feminist scholarship, with resonances for theatre practice globally. In its focus on pedagogy as well as professional practice, it analyses the process of training new generations of feminist practitioners. Jain establishes the importance of such influential figures as Anuradha Kapur and Anamika Haksar amongst others, for their own generation and in the creation of a lasting legacy of contemporary practices that stress the collaborative imagination within a feminist framework. Indu Jain is an important feminist scholar with an original and thought-provoking approach to reading practice against women’s studies in a global context, informed by key voices in both the global North and global South.” (Lisa Fitzpatrick: Senior Lecture in Drama, Ulster University, Northern Ireland)

Details

Link teilen