Re-presenting Protest and Resistance on Stage: Avvai

This article asks how theatre practice may be gendered using not just protest but also resistance as a way of addressing women's oppression. Drawing upon her long experience as a theatre activist, the author traces the various experiments that were made to 'explore alternative images, symbols, metaphors and representation which help construct various forms of [female] subjec tivity' in Tamil theatre. The most recent of these is Avvai, written by Inquilab and directed by the author. In this revisionist account, the historical/mythic poet Avvai, contrary to the prevalent image of her as an old, wise, celibate woman, is rendered as a young, sensuous, creative, 'free' person, a wandering bard. Through a particular understanding of the Sangam era in Tamil his tory, Avvai's inner world as woman, poet and performer, and her external world of community and of politics are represented in ways that satisfy the requirements of a theatre of feminist resistance.