DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2014.v02i02.026

Pages: 289-291

The South African Indian Theatre has been demarcated as a communal venture and with the exclusion of a few Indian women like Muthal Naidoo and SairaEssa, it has been monopolized by the Indian male voice. They trace it as a possibility to sketch out their predicament, to challenge the arrogation and muzzling power of their male counterparts. They utilise theatre as a weapon of emancipation. Muthal Naidoo’s play Flight from the Mahabharath is a distinctive version of the Indian epic Mahabharata written from the standpointof the leading female characters in the epic. While Draupadi, Radha, Subhadra, Kunthi, Hidimba, Urvasi, Uttarai, Ghandhari and other women conquer the centre stage the playwright unfailingly depicts the male characters too, but with a slight variation. Brihannala and Sikandi occupy the stage as the female versions of the male charactersArjuna and Amba respectively. These characters in pursuit of freedom, tired of the bondages and responsibilities thrust upon them, literally flee from the epic to create a space for them. The present paper attempts to explore the emergence of the Third Space, the concept propounded by the social theorist HomiBhabha, in the play where the characters display sites of resistance and set up new structures of authority and political initiatives. The third space definitely enables the suppressed to plot their liberation.