ABSTRACT
Binodini Dasi (1862–1941) was the leading actress of the Bengali public theatre in colonial Calcutta from 1874 to 1886, a period when female roles were still played predominantly by cross-dressed male actors. Her success was due in part to the mentorship of Girish Chandra Ghosh (1844–1912), the foremost Bengali playwright, actor, and theatre manager of his generation. Binodini's autobiography, Amar katha (My Story, 1912), uses the literary conventions of the bedona-gatha (narrative of pain) to posit a present moment of shame, desolation, and personal loss, but includes within this frame several “letters” that address Ghosh directly, and reminiscences about various aspects of her life in the theatre. The result is a pioneering document that provides first-hand accounts of actor training, the new drama being produced for performance, the performance economy of the emergent public theatre, the composition of audiences, gender relations, and the sociology of prostitute-actresses, among other topics. Equally important, the medium of print enables a female subject who does not belong to the class of “respectable” women to exercise authorship and challenge the male monopoly on the circulation of theoretical and critical discourses on theatre.
