Character Portrayal: A Comparative Study of Vijay Tendulkar and Girish Karnad's Plays

India has the richest tradition in theatre which is closely related to ancient rituals and seasonal festivities of the country. The earliest contribution to the Indian theatre dating between 2000 BCE and 4th century CE is Bharata Muni's ‘Natya Shastra' which describes a theory of theatrical performance based on the style and motion. Theatre in India started as narrative with recitation, singing and dancing become an integral elements of the theatre. A search for an authentic Indian theatre had begun within fifty years of William Jones' translation Shakuntala in 1798. Some of the notable Indian playwrights are Girish Karnad, Vijay Tendulkar, Kalidasa , Badal Sarkar , Mohan Rakesh, Rabindranath Tagore. The objective of the paper is to study and compare the various women characters of Tendulkar’s ‘Kamala’, ‘Sakharam Binder’, ‘The Vultures’ and Karnad's selected plays ‘Nagamandala’ and ‘Hayavadana’. Karnad and Tendulkar are the giants of Indian theatre , who explored the overt and covert violence in human beings and revaluated the socio-cultural , historical , gender , caste and abided the consciousness of vulnerability in Indian social hierarchy (V.M Madge and Tutan Mukherjee).

Mala Renganathan and Arnab Bhattacharya, eds. Rabindranath Tagore’s Drama in the Perspective of Indian Theatre

Rabindranath Tagore’s Drama in the Perspective of Indian Theatre successfully draws on Bangla and English sources to bring critical attention to focus on Tagore’s theatrical legacy. While it suffers from a reductive view of India and a single-minded focus on canonicity, it explores novel theoretical approaches to the performance politics of Tagore’s drama.

Management in the Performing Arts: An Empirical Exploration of Organizational Structures in Indian Theatre

It is well established that organizational structure is critical to the performance of organizations. For performing arts organizations, especially from developing countries such as India, mere survival is a struggle and sustainability becomes a vital goal before the achievement of mission. Our emergent conceptual framework, based on a grounded theory study of six theatre organizations, sheds light on aspects of organizational structure that have contributed to organizational sustainability. Theatre organizations in India are highly dependent on a small core group, often comprising founders or founding families, and rely on strong personal networks in the arts sector. They are supported by membership that is flexible and project-oriented, and organizational boundaries are relatively porous. An exploration of performing arts in the Indian context offers valuable points of comparison to the nature of organizational structures of arts organizations in the West, as evidenced by Western literature.

Crossings with Jatra: Bengali Folk-theatre Elements in a Transcultural Representation of Lady Macbeth

This paper examines a transcultural dance-theatre focusing on Lady Macbeth, through the lens of eastern Indian Bengali folk-theatre tradition, jatra. The wide range of experimentation with Shakespeare notwithstanding, the idea of an all-female representation is often considered a travesty. Only a few such explorations have earned recognition in contemporary times. One such is the Indian theatre-dance production Crossings: Exploring the facets of Lady Macbeth by Vikram Iyenger, first performed in 2004. Four women representing four facets of Lady Macbeth explore the layered nuances that constitute her through the medium of Indian classical dance and music juxtaposed with Shakespearean dialogues from Macbeth. This paper will argue the possibilities posited by this transgressive re-reading of a major Shakespearean tragedy by concentrating on a possible understanding through a Hindu religious sect —Vaishnavism, as embodied through the medium of jatra. To form a radically new stage narrative in order to bring into focus the dilemma and claustrophobia of Lady Macbeth is perhaps the beginning of a new generation of Shakespeare explorations. Iyenger’s production not only dramatizes the tragedy of Lady Macbeth through folk dramatic tradition, dance and music, but also Indianises it with associations drawn from Indian mythological women like Putana (demoness) and Shakti (sacred feminine).

Incomplete mimesis, or when Indian dance started to narrate stories

It has become customary to refer to traditional Indian performance genres as “dance-theatre” in cases where they patently display techniques of narration or storytelling, carried out through the codified and controlled use of the body in time with the music of instruments and sung lyrics. The Indic vocabulary dedicates a specific term, nṛtya, to those forms in which the narrative element clearly prevails over the abstract dance movements—where gestures and facial expressions are used to communicate emotions but the dialogues or poetic lines are assigned to a singer and not recited by the actor/dancer. However, if we look at the way in which Sanskrit theoreticians have divided the spectacular object into specific genres, things get fuzzy. The ancient theory of Indian theatre (Nāṭyaśāstra, 2nd century BC–4th century AD?), in fact, acknowledges only a binary distinction between “theatre” (nāṭya)—the conjunction of a dramatic text and its representation on stage—and “dance” (nṛtta)—movements set to a rhythm with the sole aim of producing beauty and devoid of a narrative-cum-representational function. From this perspective, the recognition of a narrative capacity in dance looks more like the fruit of great theoretical effort rather than a natural development, which has posed a number of significant challenges to literary critics, who must painstakingly negotiate between the constantly evolving genres of performance, the binding categories reiterated in the śāstras (authoritative treatises), and the newly developed aesthetic theories of drama, requiring an ever more specialized concept of dramatic mimesis. Apart from giving an overview of how the performance genres are divided and classified in the Sanskrit treatises, with an explanation of the relevant vocabulary, this article will focus on some of the theoretical problems that emerge when dance starts to narrate stories, in particular in the work of Abhinavagupta, a prominent Kashmirian philosopher writing at the turn of the first millennium.

Mahesh Dattani’s Dance Like a Man: A Depiction of the Trials and Tribulations of an Androgynous Personality

Mahesh Dattani is one of the leading Indian dramatists who responded to the problems of sexuality on the canvass of Indian theatre. He examined various facets of subjugation and marginalization rampant in Indian society. His plays focus on the sub-urban Hindu family and its trifle with gender and alternate sexuality. His plots revolve around the damaging implications of patriarchal constructs and his characters strive for liberty and self-satisfaction beneath hegemonic masculinity, compulsive heteronormativity and prejudiced cultural domain. Regarding his famous play Dance Like a Man, this paper critically examines the existing socio-cultural domain which practices politics of exclusion of androgynous identities behind the façade of peacefully cohabiting heterosexual Indian family and shows how Dattani, has remarkably countered the presentation of the polarized association of gender roles with conventional practice through performance of his protagonist. Set against the backdrop of patriarchal mindset, this paper delineates that the victim of patriarchal norms is not a woman but a man, who has traits of androgyny. It gives a brief account to highlight the significance of androgyny and portrays how androgyny is directly proportional to creativity. It elucidates how androgynous men undergo searing experiences of stigma and social untouchability in a traditional setup and how patriarchal norms reinforce dominant powers of society to stunt the growth of their personality.