Fearless Nadia leaves her calling card – first Thesis Eleven, now the Melbourne International Festival

‘The phantom lady strikes!‘ by Pushpamala N, Thesis Eleven.

‘A blue-eyed blonde in Bollywood’ by Steve Dow, The Age.

At Melbourne’s ACMI, a forthcoming production called ‘Fearless Nadia’ will be performed on October 13th as part of the Melbourne International Festival. It is a musical/acrobatic dance tribute to silent-era film legend – Mary Ann Evans – a Perth-born circus performer and Australia’s first world movie star – in Bombay. The film will be re-shown with a full orchestra, including nine Indian musicians.

Mary Ann Evans, or ‘Fearless Nadia’, is the woman/character whom Pushpamala N reinvents in her photo essay ‘The phantom lady strikes! Adventures of the artist as a masked subaltern heroine in bombay’ in Thesis Eleven, No. 113, December, 2012: 157-180. This was the piece she performed at the Thesis Eleven Festival of Ideas in Popular Print and Visual Arts in June, 2011. Alongside her artistic response to Fearless Nadia, Pushpamala discusses not only Evan’s unique biography, but also the contexts of comics, the photo romance, and Zorro – the shared influences for both her photography and the Bollywood heroine.