Session 2: 2 PM to 3.30 PM

Women in Performance

Panel constituted by India Foundation for the Arts

This session will explore the intersections of gender and performance through the examination of women in Street Theatre, Yakshagana and Carnatic music. Politics of the body and how the female body relates to, reflects, subverts and remakes social bodies through creating and engaging in performances will be the main focus of the three panelist entering it from their positions as scholars and practitioners of performance. By studying the conditions of actual productions, the social and cultural structures within which they take place, the engagement with audiences, the conditions of the market for such performances and the individual and collective life experiences of the women performers, the session will engage in a discursive discussion on approaching the feminist idiom for contemporary performing arts. Discussions will take place on the challenges, setbacks, failures, and conflicts between personal and artistic lives and private and public lives of these artists.

SumanaChandrashekar: A vocalist of Carnatic music and a ghatam player. Her recent work looks at the marginalized figure of the woman in Carnatic music and its parallel – the marginalized musical instrument, the ghatam.

DeeptiPriyaMehrotra: A scholar who had done research in the social history of Nautanki, with particular emphasis on the role of women in this north Indian folk theatre.

SharanyaRamprakash: A theatre maker, actor, director who has been working with Yakshagana. Her recent production looks at women’s roles and the streevesha in Yakshagana.

 The session will be moderated by Arundhati Ghosh, Executive Director, India Foundation for the Arts.