Women Performers as Subjects in Popular Theatres: Tamasha and Nautanki

In: History and sociology of South Asia, Volume 4, Issue 1, p. 1-24

Abstract

The main focus of this article is to forefront women performers as subjects in historiography. Women performers have remained on the margin of both mainstream and subaltern historiography. The article, instead of merely charting their artistic topography, tries to locate them in larger social, cultural and historical context. It tries to map their artistic aspirations and commitment to performance, their journeys and struggles, the troubled histories of their frustrations and endeavours, their strains and tensions as they travelled the varied worlds of the personal and professional. Till date class, caste and patriarchal prejudice marks the Tamasha and Nautanki women performers as vulgar and veiled 'prostitute' or 'loose' women. The article also moves beyond the paradigm of art and work binary, challenging the middle-class evocation of performance as a temple of art. Invisibilising the women performers as workers forecloses their struggles and contestations.