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Theatrical Review and Deconstruction of Gender Construct in Mahesh Dattani‟S Dance Like a Man

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Theatrical Review and Deconstruction of Gender Construct in Mahesh Dattani‟S Dance Like a Man JAC : A Journal Of Composition Theory ISSN : 0731-6755 THEATRICAL REVIEW AND DECONSTRUCTION OF GENDER CONSTRUCT IN MAHESH DATTANI‟S DANCE LIKE A MAN. PROF. DEEPAK KUMAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, MODERN EUROPEAN AND OTHER FOREIGN LANGUAGES BIRLA CAMPUS HEMVATI NANDAN BAHUGUNA GARHWAL UNIVERSITY Email- [email protected] Mobile No- 8650050639 ARIFUR RAHMAN CHOUDHURY M.PHIL (PURSUING) DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH, MODERN EUROPEAN AND OTHER FOREIGN LANGUAGES BIRLA CAMPUS HEMVATI NANDAN BAHUGUNA GARHWAL UNIVERSITY Email ID- [email protected] Mobile No-7906634542 Abstract Mahesh Dattani is an influential playwright in the present period. He has written plays for stage, radio and for the „big screen‟ and has been successfully vocalising the dilemma faced by the invisibles and the marginalised in a traditional Indian society. The dimensions of Dattani‟s Dance like a Man are divided as technical (nritta), cultural and Volume XIII Issue II FEBRUARY 2020 Page No: 774 JAC : A Journal Of Composition Theory ISSN : 0731-6755 linguistic aspects. What Dattini has tried to put forward through this screenplay is that all these patients are equally entitled to love, life and respect irrespective of any presuppositions of society. Every character manages to come to terms with the situation. Here the Researcher would discuss every aspect in detail that deals with the play and the characters. In India people think that traditional dance is meant only for women and it is a land on which no Male should ever tread. Here the question is not of mere dance form or hobby but it has very deep roots in our culture too. It is about the whole conditioning of a Nation that boasts of having the most ancient cultural tradition. Key words: Mahesh Dattani, Theatre, Culture, Language, Dance, Drama, Indian Tradition, Dramatic Technique. Introduction India is a country with glorious past, harbouring countless myths, living traditions, plurality of culture, rich archetypes, symbols, rituals etc. that impart endless expressions and meanings to life. Despite there has been a paucity of dramatic expressions in Indian English drama. As drama evolves and survives primarily through performance it also requires an immediate connectivity between character and audience through living language of cultural significance. The arrested growth of Indian English drama owes a great deal to the lack of meaningful communication between the author and the audience. The Indian dramatists writing in English, initially, found themselves in a dilemma. They were not very sure about their target audience. They wrote plays either with the hope of performing on an English stage or being read by the ruling British Dattani was bom on 7th August 1958 in Bangalore where his parents moved to Bangalore from Gujarat. At Baldwins, Dattani recalls his experiences at his Christian Volume XIII Issue II FEBRUARY 2020 Page No: 775 JAC : A Journal Of Composition Theory ISSN : 0731-6755 institution. Young Dattani was struck by the aura of the Gujarati stage and the illusory world of the theatre that would stay with him. Later, watching Gujarati and Canada plays in his late teens he realized: I didn‟t know the world at my doorstep. I got involved in theatre and for a long time continued to do European plays in translation. [....Seeing] Gujarati theatre in Mumbai, I realized I had to unlearn a lot that I learnt in school. That is when my true education really began (Ayyar, 2004). Dattani was a student of St. Joseph‟s college. He neither shows any interest in literature nor any sign of literary imagination. In the year 1984 he founded Playpen, his own company and began to look for Indian plays in English. He chooses English language as his medium as one that is home grown and Indian-a hybrid language that is spoken fluently by his Indian Characters. “...You‟ve got to be true to your expression also. English is for me a sort of elixir given. It‟s my language as it is to a lot of Indians here and abroad.” He gives expression to the longings and aspirations of the middle class Indians. He carved out a place as one of India‟s premier English language writer. Each of his plays tackles a different important social issue. His contribution is impressive and his plays have defined the English theatre movement. Dancing around the Indian Tradition Volume XIII Issue II FEBRUARY 2020 Page No: 776 JAC : A Journal Of Composition Theory ISSN : 0731-6755 Working with multiple dissonances, rather than unity, Dattani‟s Dance Like A Man become the contesting area of discordant forces within oneself, family and various informing orders in society. A project of de-stereotyping gender roles, Dance Like a man focuses on the damaging effect patriarchy exerts on the man who tends to keep outside the gender matrix. The play explicitly deals with the problem of dancing like a man in a normative pattern and invites disturbing “expectations”. Of course, it wasn‟t the denotation, even the connotation of the four individual words; rather, what was disturbing, was the silent “fifth” signifier -- creating a rapidly shifting “meaning” …The unusual cohabitation of the marginal words, “DANCE” and “MAN”, creates a constant commotion, anxiously trying to find a definite order/“meaning” at the centre of signification, though constantly disturbing any fixity and creating space for contesting ideas. There is something very “Indian” about the play. He loves the traditional art form, especially Bharatanatyam which is integral to this play. It is a play about a young man who wanted to be a dancer, growing up in a world that believes dance is for women. It was subsequently performed at the NCPA Experimental Theatre, Mumbai, on 14th February 1990 with Dattani as an actor as well as a director. It was also performed by Prime Time in 1995 with Lillete Dubey as an actor as well as a director. This production continues to tour occasionally. This is a play about performs; and uses theatre to demonstrate how in a world of hypocrisy, acting becomes a way of life. Some critics say that the play probes into three generations of conflict by exploring and juxtaposing the contemporaneous and the early history of India in personal terms. Volume XIII Issue II FEBRUARY 2020 Page No: 777 JAC : A Journal Of Composition Theory ISSN : 0731-6755 The present paper makes a modest attempt to explore the theatrical aspects in Dattani‟s Dance like a man. The researcher aims at unfolding the several features of his play. Dattani is widely appreciated for his technical excellences as well as displaying a wide range of themes and subjects. The study is basically text-oriented. These select plays have made bold innovations and experiments, dealt with themes related to the present social scenario, in an effort to bring about social change, and sociocultural revolution to make the people aware of the need to reform the present social structure. The plays deal with the aspirations of the deprived mid marginalised sections of society and depict the acute conflicts of contemporary city life. Language, Culture and Morality Dattani shows his command of language in the play. The playwright uses the original Hindi words like - kurta, mithai, guruji, jalebi, gulmohar, Navratri Utsav etc. as the use of English equivalents cannot fully bring out the concepts. His dialogue is crisp and pointed. When Dattani is critical of the contemporary society, he composes powerful dialogue of a serious nature. At the same time, he can be witty as the occasion demands. It is obvious through the dialogue between Amritlal and Jairaj as well as Jairaj and Ratna. Here is an example: “Ratna: Why bring it up now after forty — Jairaj: You brought it up. What did you say? I stopped being a man for you became we couldn‟t survive on our own. Ratna: I didn‟t say like that! Volume XIII Issue II FEBRUARY 2020 Page No: 778 JAC : A Journal Of Composition Theory ISSN : 0731-6755 Jairaj: Your face tells me you did. Ratna: You mustn‟t take notice of what I say when I‟m upset. Jairaj: That is the only time you make sense to me.”(Dattani, 410) In Dattani, “the focus is on the family as the representative unit of the corruption of culture and morality, in whose midst the politics of ambition takes on the most ruthless forms”. Jairaj‟s choice of dance, a feminine pursuit -- more specifically the harlot‟s pursuit -- disturbs the hetero-patriarchal normality. The play presents the complexities and intricacies issuing from its protagonist‟s refusal to conform to the culture-specific genre of “man”, and the consequentially emergent complications in a modern post- independence urban India. As in other plays, family is portrayed as a product of the value system the society stands for and the cultural discourse of which it is a part. The play records how the wide socio cultural discomfort with the culturally disruptive image of a male dancer jeopardizes the intimacies and sense of belonging in a family, and how the members, in their “need to belong”, interrogate the deviation. Breaking Gender Stereotypes Interpretations of sexual differences are complex. Almost all observations declare women bodies to be inherently inferior. Dance Like A Man highlights that it's not only always a woman who suffers in society but even men are rendered helpless as a consequence of cultural conditioning. Men's voices sometimes remain unheard because primarily they are considered as oppressors and nobody notices their oppression by Volume XIII Issue II FEBRUARY 2020 Page No: 779 JAC : A Journal Of Composition Theory ISSN : 0731-6755 society. A patriarchal society suppresses a woman by associating only the "feminine" qualities with her, as her counterpart, a man is expected to conform to standardized "masculine" qualities.
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