Women Performers as Subjects in Popular Theatre: Tamasha and Nautanki

<strong>CENTRE FOR WOMEN'S STUDIES, JNU</strong> a Seminar on <strong>Women Performers as Subjects in Popular Theatre: Tamasha and Nautanki</strong> by <strong>Dr. Lata Singh</strong> (Associate Professor, Center for Women's Studies, JNU) Date: <strong>11 August 2015</strong> This presentation will forefront women performers as subjects in historiography. Women performers have remained on the margin of both mainstream and subaltern historiography. The presentation 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 presentation will also move beyond the paradigm of art and work binary, challenging the middle class evocation of performance as a temple of art. Invisibilizing the women performers as workers forecloses their struggles and contestations.