Desis in the House: South Asian American Theatre and the Politics of Belonging
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Desis in the House: South Asian American Theatre and the Politics of Belonging by Rohini Chaki B.A., Jadavpur University, 2005 M.A., Jadavpur University, 2007 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2016 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Rohini Chaki It was defended on April 12, 2016 and approved by Neilesh Bose, Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Victoria Kathleen George, Professor, Department of Theatre Arts Lisa Jackson-Schebetta, Assistant Professor, Department of Theatre Arts Dissertation Advisor: Bruce McConachie, Professor, Department of Theatre Arts ii Copyright © by Rohini Chaki 2016 iii Desis in the House: South Asian American Theatre and the Politics of Belonging Rohini Chaki, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, 2016 This dissertation attempts to update the traditional understanding of what constitutes American theatre by bringing into focus works by South Asian American playwrights addressing the racialization of desis - a large and diverse community of people with origins in South Asia - who have, after the events of 9/11, become questionable citizen subjects in the United States. I examine the various ways in which the plays under consideration represent the negotiation of South Asian American identity in its quest to establish belonging on the American nation-space. I look at scripts and productions to explore responses to the performance of the American desi subject’s precarious belonging in a national space that sees them variously as cultural others or even threats. These plays put the spotlight on techniques of othering as mediated by the structures of class, gender and sexuality, and religion, but they also have certain universal qualities that offer an affective staged realization of the imagined community that is America today - an ethnoracial conglomerate that transcends the conventional white/black racial binary. These plays, moreover, take ownership of and expand the representation of South Asian-origin characters in American popular culture beyond such stock types iv as the cab driver, the terrorist or the computer nerd. Finally, they forecast the future of the American stage and the direction that American theatre must necessarily take in order to account for the growing diversity of the lives it reflects and shapes. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..............................................................................................IX 1.0 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ............................................................ 1 1.1 PREFACE ............................................................................................. 1 1.2 PROJECT BRIEF ................................................................................. 2 1.3 DEMOGRAPHICS & A BRIEF HISTORY OF ARRIVAL .................. 11 1.4 BELONGING WITHIN A TRANSNATIONAL CONTEXT ................ 20 1.5 THE DESI AS A RACIALIZED ENTITY ............................................ 30 1.6 LITERATURE REVIEW ..................................................................... 37 1.7 CHAPTER SYNOPSES ...................................................................... 41 1.8 CONCLUSION ................................................................................... 49 2.0 CHAPTER TWO: NOSTALGIA, DREAMING AND CLASS-BASED RACIAL OTHERING IN CHAOS THEORY AND SAKINA’S RESTAURANT ........ 52 2.1 NOSTALGIC (BE)LONGING IN CHAOS THEORY .......................... 58 2.2 SAKINA’S RESTAURANT AND THE (AMERICAN) DREAM OF BELONGING .................................................................................................... 80 2.3 CONCLUSION ................................................................................... 92 vi 3.0 CHAPTER THREE: MARRIAGE, LOVE, AND (BE)LONGING IN SOUTH ASIAN AMERICAN THEATRE ................. 94 3.1 PRIDE AND RACIAL PREJUDICE IN LYME PARK: AN AUSTONIAN ROMANCE OF AN INDIAN NATURE .............. 101 3.2 MARRYING NANDINI AND THE ARRANGED MARRIAGE PLOT ..................................................................... 111 3.3 MAPPING THE MODERN FAMILY IN A NICE INDIAN BOY ............................................................................ 116 3.4 BRAHMAN/I AND THE QUEER DISCOURSE OF DIASPORA ............................................................................... 136 3.5 CONCLUSION .............................................................. 150 4.0 CHAPTER FOUR: BARRIERS, DISGRACED AND THE PERILS OF MUSLIM AMERICAN IDENTITY .................................. 154 4.1 BARRIERS: IN THE HAUNTED LANDSCAPE OF 9/11 ... 159 4.2 DISGRACED AND THE THEATRE OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ....................................................................... 171 4.3 CONCLUSION .............................................................. 196 5.0 CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION: DECENTERING THE NATIONAL NARRATIVE OF BELONGING ...................................... 202 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................. 20 8 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Pulse Ensemble Theatre’s Chaos Theory.................................................... 77 Figure 2. Pulse Ensemble Theatre’s Chaos Theory.................................................... 78 Figure 3. East West Players’ A Nice Indian Boy ...................................................... 134 Figure 4. About Face Theatre’s Brahman/i .............................................................. 146 Figure 5. Thumbnail of Lincoln Center Theatre's 2012 Disgraced ......................... 181 Figure 6. Portrait of Juan de Pareja by Diego Velázquez, 1650 .............................. 183 viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Professor Bruce McConachie, for his patience and gentle encouragement as I worked my way through this manuscript. Thank you also to my dissertation committee for their time and valuable feedback. I am grateful to colleagues and staff at the Department of Theatre Arts for fostering an environment of warmth, creativity, and intellect, and for the endless supply of baked goods. The friendship of Pradipta Ranjan Ray, Sourav and Sudarshana Bhattacharya, and Tathagata and Soumitri Dasgupta helped make Pittsburgh home and they have each been valuable educators in their own way. Thank you, my dear Pittsburgh family. I did not come for you, but for you I stayed. Thank you to my mentor, Professor Ananda Lal at Jadavpur University, without whose unceasing faith in my abilities I may never have known the joys of either the stage or scholarship. My eternal gratitude and thanks to my father – my first and best teacher – whose generosity and kindness is a guiding force in all I do. I write this for my own little South Asian American – my infant son, Hameer Pratap. May you always be at home in the world. And I write for my husband, ix Dipanjan, whose friendship and accomplished nagging led to the completion of this project, and whose untiring pursuit of knowledge inspires my own. x 1.0 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 PREFACE This dissertation1 arises out of my own struggles with identity and belonging in my country of migration – the United States of America. I arrived in Pittsburgh from Kolkata, India in Fall 2009 to begin my doctoral work at the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Theatre Arts. Almost immediately upon arrival, my felt difference thousands of miles from what I had thus far called “home” began to shape my personal identity. Before I arrived in the US, I could identify as: woman, journalist, actor, theatre scholar. Once in the US, certain identifying categories that I had never explicitly acknowledged or thought about while I lived in India became immediately apparent. In India, I was, in addition to markers I have just mentioned, also: middle-class, part of the Hindu religious majority (despite no special interest in this particular membership), Indian national. Five years of American living later, even more identifying markers have been added to my sense of selfhood: alien immigrant, graduate student, brown, not Hispanic, Asian Indian, 1 My dissertation title, “Desis in the House” shares the phrase with Sunaina Maira’s book of the same name, although I arrived at it on my own. South Asian, minority. With it has come the awareness of how politically charged each of these identity categories are for an ethnoracial minority such as myself. My dissertation on South Asian American theatre arises out of an old habit of turning to the theatre to understand my own self. 1.2 PROJECT BRIEF It is my hope that this dissertation contributes to the field in the following ways: primarily, it is the first lengthy analysis of the dramatic representation of concerns with identity and belonging of the South Asian American subject. Secondly, it is an exploration of contemporary American plays that updates traditional understandings of what constitutes American theatre. These plays, mainly written by second-generation South Asian-origin Americans and mainly produced between 1998 and the present time, put bodies and characters on stage that revise the perception of the American subject (and, with regard to staging, the American body). They focus on issues of racialization and minoritization of a diverse and large community of people who have, after 9/11, become questionable citizen subjects. My analysis of these plays in the chapters to follow offers a fresh perspective