Abstract

Visibility and seeing, to a greater extent, are gestural and embodied in classical Indian performance traditions. Seeing is not only a physical act and visibility and presence are not conceived strictly as material conditions of perception. The Natyasastra, in many ways, proposes the idea that the actor’s body is ‘optical mechanism’ capable of generating and delivering embodied visuality in a performance. The visual field of a classical Indian performance, therefore, depends greatly on the physical presence and the performance of the actor’s body. The performance, therefore, is a means to structure the act of spectator’s seeing as well as what is being seen.