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On the wild side

La Loba, based on the concept of a wolf woman residing in the subconscious, featured gripping movements and images

Back to nature The play revealed the different avatars of women

Active canvas organised the Bangalore premier of La Loba at their campus recently. The play is adapted from one of the re-interpreted stories of the wolf woman in Jungian Psychoanalyst Dr Clarissa Pinakola Estes’ master piece ’The Woman W ho Runs With the Wolves’.

Most of the content of the play comes from Dr Estes’ interpretation of the Wolf Woman. The wolf woman is wild, and untamed like the environs in which she lives.

She is alert, awake, caring, attentive, intense, intuitive all at the same time. And as Dr Estes states she is endangered and thoroughly suppressed into the subconscious of all women.

True to the Jungian concept, Dr Estes states that the wild woman resided in the universal unconscious of all women.

Yasmin Jasdanwala and Jairo Vergara Fruto ( the director) put together their interpretation of the wolf woman.

The genre of the play is physical theatre and the story is of a woman. There are three songs and some lines in the play.

Movement is the predominant language here – and therefore the play faces the risk seeming almost meaningless.

However, the concept of a wild wolf woman residing in the subconscious of a woman is compelling and one probably develops a full admiration for the physical control of the performer. Many movements and images are gripping and one is compelled to ascribe a meaning into them.

The actor creates many montages. Each of these montages presents the archetypes of women. The Wolf Woman is shown as being true and untamed. The wolf woman is combative and unflinching in her desire to dominate all women.

The wife, the daughter and the mother are all portrayed as weak, degenerated in spirit and voiceless.

Slowly but surely the wolf woman takes over the life of the young tamed woman. True to her pagan nature she pays respect and thanks the seas for saving her.

The play tries to create a time gone by - that all tamed women (read women in a society) speak staccato, and make robotic moves. This however seems rather trite and overused, and very unlike the interpretation in the book.

Estes goes beyond looking at La Loba as an archetype for just a woman. Instead of being in a world where one is a domesticated animal, or a puppet of sorts, the Wolf Woman continuously threatens to break out and live freely. This however is unlike Estes. She tells all the stories in the book in the same way.

In her deconstruction of all the popular fairy tales in her book, she inverts myth of a damsel in distress, by transferring the power from the Prince Charming, to the damsel herself.

In the story of the Wolf Woman, La Loba, the old woman (montage 1) collects the bones, and remains of the dead wolf and resurrects it.

Yasmin creates the same scene at the beginning of the play from where the wolf struggles to take over the woman, making her stretch her capabilities and be limitless.

It was thus disappointing to see the play being limited in the interpretation. The struggle of the woman is not just limited to the gender. It is the human struggle to break binds and confines and as Estes points out in her book, find the true need – true primal need.

Songs in Sanskrit, Arabic and Spanish dotted the performance. They seemed like the tools for transition from one montage to another.

However, it would have been better understood if sung more clearly. The play ends on a hopeful note – with hope spelt out for the new born.

Jairo Fruto provided live music for Yasmin’s performance.

Both the performer and the musician exchange notes in hushed tones sometimes on stage which brings out a rawness in the performance.

DEEPTHY SHEKHAR

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