Dominative stage/theatre/performance discourses usually depict societies where only the straight sexual orientation is taken to be the ?normal? rather than normative and the voice of the people with non-normative sexuality remain muted. Since stage performance can become a vital medium where subversive thoughts can germinate, it is specifically shameful that the heterosexual tradition succeeded in muting the voice of the LGBTQ communities in most of the earlier performances in the Indian theatres. Staging alternate sexualities, therefore, becomes an act of mapping sexualities producing an alternative history in the process. This paper analyzes select contemporary Indian plays staged in the Indian theatres to show how these depict the plight of people with alternative sexual orientation. While challenging the heteronormativity, the playwrights/directors/actors transform the existing tradition also by confronting the politics of language. This paper also proposes to offer a brief sketch of how the violation of constitutional rights in case of people belonging to the LGBTQ communities in India gets voiced in stage spaces.
Associate Professor of English, M.U.C. Women?s College, Burdwan (West Bengal)
