Prof. Bishnupriya Dutt, from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, will be in Malta as a visiting professor in the Theatre Studies Department between 8 and 10 May. She is a professor of theatre, and an active theatre practitioner in India and daughter of Utpal Dutt, one of the most important Indian theatre-makers of the twentieth century. She is currently the President of the International Federation of Theatre Research. She has published extensively about Indian postcolonial and feminist theatre.
While in Malta, she will deliver two lectures which are open to the public:
Event: Socialist Materialist Feminist Theatre in post-colonial spaces (India): Intersectionality and intercultural dialogues
Date: Thursday 9 May 2024
Time: 11:00 - 13:00
Venue: Lecture Theatre 2, University of Malta, Msida Campus
Post-colonial Indian theatre, particularly the feminist theatre (1980-2010) responded critically in theatrical terms to the impoverishment, sexual violence and increasing marginalisation of the weaker sections of society, and at the intersections of such exclusions the women’s vulnerability. Focusing on some critical works by major women directors, the lecture dwells on how they shaped a socialist materialist aesthetics, strategies to address sexism and gender normativity, while impacting on professional practices such as casting and rehearsals. It reveals the extent to which Indian feminist theatre-makers have participated in worldwide feminist debates and highlights their contribution to inter-subjective encounters between post-colonial feminist practices and feminist theatre in the UK and beyond.
Event: Feminist Performance Activism and Activism
Date: Friday 10 May 2024
Time: 15:00 - 17:00
Venue: OH112 , University of Malta, Msida Campus
Feminist performance practices have always bridged the critical gaps between civil society activism, such as feminist campaigns mobilising women against patriarchy and gender violence, and radical experiments with text, performance idioms and form. In recent times, performance activism has created new feminist aesthetics of resistance and potentials of solidarities across the global political arena to counter growing authoritarianism, conservatism, and structural violence. Following Maya Rao’s performance activism trajectory since 2014, along with other feminist performance artists in India, UK and the world (Rao, Las Tesis, Red Ladder), this lecture looks at how these dialogues have been significant in creating critical gestures of feminist protest-performances and challenged culturalism where sexual violence is associated with culture and third world pathologies.
