Reclaiming Public Spaces in Post-pandemic India (Kolkata): Activist Theatre, Gender and a Resurgence of the Marginal

The politics of our post-Covid times are expressed through various registers. In Kolkata, one especially powerful artistic medium for such expressions was the revival of street theatre as young and senior theatre practitioners plunged into exploring critical issues that have been all-pervasive since...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Theatre research international 2024-03, Vol.49 (1), p.111-117
Main Authors: PAUL, AHVANA, ROY, TAMALIKA, MONDAL, SUMIT, BISWAS, SHRINJITA
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aesthetics
Audiences
College campuses
COVID-19
Domestic violence
Dossier
Festivals
Gender
Manual workers
Middle class
Migrant workers
Migration
Pandemics
Political activism
Public spaces
Theater
Women
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Summary:The politics of our post-Covid times are expressed through various registers. In Kolkata, one especially powerful artistic medium for such expressions was the revival of street theatre as young and senior theatre practitioners plunged into exploring critical issues that have been all-pervasive since the beginning of the pandemic. As people finally started to venture out, content to be amidst human congregations, street plays, being located in open-air spaces, proved both economical and safe. The issues these street performances highlighted and their modes of presentations could be described as what Tony Fisher calls ‘activist theatre’ – which mobilizes the people by interpellating its audience around a specific grievance or issue that possesses an emotional appeal.1 These performances are a form of artistic activism, or ‘artivism’ as termed by Chantal Mouffe: the use of aesthetic means for political activism, ‘as a counter-hegemonic move against the capitalist appropriation of aesthetics’.2
ISSN:0307-8833
1474-0672
DOI:10.1017/S0307883323000421