In this dissertation I examine contemporary drama from India, Jamaica, and Nigeria in conjunction with feminist movements in these countries. Many of the dramatists discussed in this project were influenced by feminist mobilization and some of them present a progressive politics that is in advance of the goals of this mobilization by directing attention to the concerns of sexual minorities that have often been ignored by feminists in postcolonial locations. The plays I analyze were thus conceived and performed as "political acts" contesting the idea of the middle class, wage-earning male as the model citizen to suggest alternative conceptions of citizenship premised on working class sexual identities. I consider the possibility of postcolonial drama generating a discourse on citizenship that takes into account the material and sexual aspects of the lives of women and sexual minorities. I provide an overview of feminist movements to situate the politics of postcolonial sexualities, delineate key ideas in performance theory that have impacted postcolonial theatre and drama practitioners, and theorize the gendered and sexually marked body in performance. The conclusion I arrive at from an examination of drama in these three contexts is that by allying with feminist movements these dramatists present non-familial, non-generational forms of kinship that re-evaluate citizenship from the perspective of women and sexual minorities.
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