If there is one term that can describe Acting Up: Gender and Theatre in India, 1979 onwards by scholar A. Mangai, it is self-reflexive. It is not that the author’s life and the book’s concerns reflect each other; rather, they shape and reshape each other continuously. What makes the book remarkable is that it manages to include the readers in this circular relationship, thus making the book a site of dialogue.
Though Acting Up … says it is about exploring the intersections of gender and theatre, its explorations move along three axes: gender, theatre, and India. It is a tricky exercise. For starters, both gender and theatre are anchored in experience, which in turn poses problems for theorising about them, as the introductory chapter explains. Moreover, the ‘doing’ in gender and theatre is rooted in the context of the performance, and there is an inherent difficulty in defining that for the Indian context, for it means defining what constitutes ‘India’. .
Mangai explains the difficulty of such an undertaking by taking us through a short review of different literatures that attempted such explorations. The book shows us how this has been negotiated by different people at times. And ‘the body and the narrative’ are chosen as the site of these negotiations. If this sounds a tad dry, it is because the tone and content of the first chapter, in which the author sets the stage, is academic. But once the main act begins, Mangai assumes a storyteller’s garb.
The rest of the chapters are filled with stories of feminist theatre from different parts of India. Mangai’s background as a theatre practitioner reflects in the depth of her engagement with the material. For instance, in the chapter ‘Staging Gender’, which is about how theatre engages with gender issues, she tells the story of Stree Sangharsh/Theatre Union by weaving in reviews, interviews with members of the group, and first-hand accounts of the plays. .
Mangai brings in a strong personal element. Her narratives of feminist theatre in Tamil Nadu are especially rich in detail, like the footnote about Jayalatha from Pudukkottai, who plays male roles. Her work with Chennai Kalai Kuzhu, a part of the Progressive Writers’ Association; Sakthi, a women’s theatre group; and Voicing Silence, a feminist theatre project, and the questions she faced as a feminist and the artistic choices she had to make, shape the concerns of the book.
A list of the different practitioners the book engages with is too long to mention, but a few chosen randomly include Tripurari Sharma, Moloyashree Hashmi, Stree Sakthi Sanghatana and Anuradha Kapur. The works, again chosen randomly, include Kaala Kanavu , Himmat Mai and Umrao. By consciously bringing together narratives from different parts of India, Mangai demonstrates how Indian feminist theatre can be interpreted from different positions.
The book does not offer an overarching theory on feminist theatre, nor does Mangai impose a singular narrative. Such an approach allows readers to form their own interpretations. A spirit of dialogue underlies the book; a dialogue that will hopefully continue long after the last page has been turned.
