Self or “The Other”: The Female Narratives in Girish Karnad’s Nagamandala and Bali: The Sacrifice

The paper resolves to study the female characters of Rani and the Queen in the plays of Girish Karnad’s Nagamandala and Bali: The Sacrifice respectively. Regional theatre received a new impetus after independence from the British rule. Karnad’s plays due to their English translations have been well received by the reading public and also been performed at national and international platforms. The paper, seeks to establish, the predicament of domestic women as reflected in the text of plays mentioned. The plays will be analyzed in the intersection of Judith Butler’s concept of “performativity” as enumerated in her book Gender Trouble and Michel Foucault’s precept of the “self” as enumerated in the chapter “Technologies of the Self”. The paper will start drawing its argument from the idea of Judith Butler wherein she states that one’s gender is constructed through one’s own repetitive performance of it. The narrative of the main female characters in the said plays will provide the ground to find out a way to deal with the trouble that lies with “the other”.