Acting Up

Theatre is about representation about individual bodies and the way these bodies relate to reflect subvert and remake social bodies. Acting up: gender and theatre in India 1979 onwards explores these intersections of gender and theatre through an examination of the work of women theatre practitioners. It looks at the conditions that shape these processes: feminist and class politics caste ethnicity faith and nationalism. This book thinks through a new feminist idiom for contemporary theatre practice. By examining the conditions of actual production of theatre work often by a collective effort not tied to any single point of authority (text playwright or director) this study gestures towards an alternate aesthetic framework. Acting up analyses the work of a number of major theatre makers including Amal allana Anuradha Kapur Kirti Jain Maya Rao moloyashree hashmi neelam man Singh Chowdhry Sabitri Debi saoli Mitra saroop Dhruv sushama Deshpande triuprari Sharma Usha Ganguli veenapani chawl and others as well as theatre groups such as Chennai ka LA I kuzhu Jana Natya manch theatre Union voicing silence etc. The author a. Mangai herself a leading feminist theatre maker brings the practitioners perspectives and insights as well as her vast experience to bear upon this ground-breaking study.