Nivedita( BAH17024)

Folk Theatre Project Proposal: Nautanki

Nautanki is usually performed in the states of UP, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh,
Rajasthan and Punjab. Nautanki can be dated back to the 16th century where it has
mention in the Ain-e Akbari written by Abul Fazal. Of course, it is possible that it
existed even before that. We just have written records of its existence dating back
to 16th century. Nautanki writing includes words from Braj, Awadhi and Bhojpuri
along with chaste Urdu and Urban Hindustani. It was initially known as Swang and
attained its name of Nautanki after the very popular performance of Shehzadi
Nautanki in Kanpur. (Bhardwaj, 2013) Through plays like Amar Singh Rathore
and Jallianwalah Bagh, it challenged British authority.
Initially women were not allowed to be actors in Nautanki. Men would then play
the parts of women. Gulab Bai, who was the first woman to enter the stage of
Nautanki in the 20th Century paved way for other women performers in Nautanki.
Nautanki was pluralistic not only in terms of the languages it used but also the
cultural background of the performers. (Bhardwaj, 2013)
“The Kanpur style borrowed many elements of prose dialogue delivery from Parsi
Theater (a theater genre inspired by European theater traditions), and mixed them
with the Hathrasi singing to come up with its new style of performance ie
Nautanki.” (Sharma, 2006)
Parsi theatre was clearly the dominant form of urban entertainment until the arrival
of talkies in1931, its influence going well beyond the metropolitan centres of
Bombay and Calcutta and affecting performances such as the Maharashtrian
Sangeet Natak and the North Indian Nautanki, both significant folk dramas. The
impact on the latter was important, as an urban form (Parsi theatre) influenced and
was in turn influenced by a form (Nautanki) whose audience was not primarily
town people but included “agricultural and artisan groups” (Hansen 2001: 90) as
well. (Hansen, 1983)
Unfortunately, the reformist discourse that resulted from the colonial experience
pushed the theatre to the margins of respectability.  In the North Indian region, the
Arya Samaj similarly abolished performances by dancing girls, introduced a
purified form of the Holi festival, and condemned local theatrical forms.[2] Literary
leaders like Bharatendu Harishchandra of Banaras declared most kinds of popular
theatre "depraved" and lacking in theatricality. It is interesting to not though that
the Hindi film song as a form is inspired by Nautanki. ( Vijaykar, 2013)
I would like to explore how it’s performance then and now acts as a medium of
social change and how elements of it seeping into Parsi theatre and Bollywood
manage to challenge the status quo. “ . Indeed Indian cinema is deeply indebted to
Nautanki, be it plots, styles of song, dance, lyrics, etc, but domination of cinema
has sent this folk form into oblivion”.( Singh, 2020) (My methodology would be a
personal response on the existing literature on the topic.
Citation
Hansen, Kathryn. “Indian Folk Traditions and the Modern Theatre.” Asian
Folklore Studies, vol. 42, no. 1, 1983, pp. 77–89. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/1178367. Accessed 5 June 2021.
Hansen, Kathryn. “ Grounds for Play: The Nautanki theatre of North India”,
University of California Press, 1992
Vijayakar, R. “The Role of a Song in a Hindi Film”. The South Asianist Journal,
Vol. 2, no. 3, Dec. 2013, http://www.southasianist.ed.ac.uk/article/view/167.
Bhardwaj, Vyomika Sharma.” ‘Nautanki’- Folk Theatre: A Study of Women
Performers and Audience in Mathura, Uttar Pradesh.” Dissertation submitted to
University of Delhi (Lady Irwin College). 2013,
https://www.academia.edu/30958727/nautanki_folk_theatre_a_study_of_women_p
erformers_and_audi ences_in_mathura_uttarpradesh> accessed 24/08/2020.
Sharma, Devendra. “ PERFORMING NAUTANKI: POPULAR COMMUNITY
FOLK PERFORMANCES AS SITES OF DIALOGUE AND SOCIAL
CHANGE”. Ohio University, 2006
Singh, Siddhartha. “Nautanki: Evolution, Issues and Challenges”, Rupkatha
Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, Sri JNMPG College,Lucknow,
2020