Pannaga Jois

Pannaga is a performance maker and researcher from India currently based in New York.

Title of Project

Engendering Spectator

Description of Project

Presentation addresses the spectatorship of ‘female’ audience contemplating heterosexual enforcement of gender binary within Yakshagana, a traditional Indian theatre conventionally performed by ‘men’. While playing ‘female’ roles, ‘male’ Yakshagana actor recreates the image of ‘feminine’ to feed ‘male’ gaze while ‘masculinizing’ the spectator position by heterosexual imposition of object desire. The female spectators prohibited on homosexual desire, by Butler’s proposition, develop melancholic relations to ‘femininity’ grieving the lost object of love. By this formulation, ‘male’ actor’s demonstration of ‘female’ character on stage and the fantasy of the performance text allows the spectators to circulate among identification across genders and sexuality. Based on these psychoanalytic description of gender formation, the project looks at performer-spectator relationship in terms of developing the gaze by the ‘women’ within Yakshagana against phallocentric demands where the ‘women’ to be looked at and desired is the kind a ‘man’ desires and a ‘woman’ grieves for.

Areas of Academic Interest

Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Psychoanalysis, Dance and Movement Politics