Exclusionary Practices and Images of Performing Women in Indian Theatre and Film: A Tale from the Year 1857: Azizun Nisa and Pakeezah

Abstract

This study illustrates the representation of performing women as the cultural or societal Other in India before and after independence. It focuses on disciplining the female body while also addressing the shifts in ideologies pertaining to its representation on stage. This study examines how “social identities are signaled, formed, and negotiated through bodily movement” (Desmond 29) bringing into discussion the inclusions and exclusions of the performing women within the social fabric. It focuses on plays and films that interrogate the shifting identities of such women during and after colonial rule through feminist perspectives. In doing so, I also examine the images of women as portrayed in Rabindranath Tagore’s Natir Puja, Tripurari Sharma’s A Tale from the Year 1857: Azizun Nisa, and Kamal Amrohi’s legendary film, Pakeezah to explore whether the female protagonists under discussion resist or reinforce dominant conceptions of gender. I further investigate whether the female protagonists reinforce the essentialized notions of gender or represent female subjectivity as transgressive or subversive while interrogating the cultural politics associated with the representation of the performing women, and the discursive constructions of their bodies.

Keywords: Performance, gender, body, subjectivity, transgressive