Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Photo: R. Ashok

Impressive Voicing women’s empowerment

Only at the end of the 90-minute-long play, one realises that histrionics has no part to play in it.

The impassioned narration of feminism by four girls — Revathi, Kalpana, Ponni and Kavimalar — is what forms the gist of ‘Kala Kanavu,’ the second play of ‘Marapachi.’

It is partly a documentary, partly a play, which intersperses instances from modern history that has documentations of women who came out in public to work for a cause. The play is essentially a compilation of parts of modern history that features women who think beyond family and domesticity.

It debates on devadasi system, commemorates women who were part of self respect movement, narrates the birth of Christianity in the State, touches on the women’s role in the national movement, discusses the changes in women’s status in Tamil Nadu and unearths the buried history of Muslim women’s voices for women empowerment.

And surprisingly, the docu-drama was as much gripping as any play with a breezy story line. Sprinkled with music through ‘thappu,’ the play transcends social strata and gender.

“Preparatory text has been done by V. Geetha,” says the director of the play Mangai, a pseudonym of Padma Venkataraman, professor of Literature in Stella Maris College.

Carefully wrapping the posters, the writer-historian-activist Ms. Geetha, intervenes: “A lot of research has been put into it. The entire team has been very helpful.”

Dialogues were placed after extensive research, as every word of the play has relevance to the important events in history. When the text was ready, Ms. Mangai was looking for an appropriate cast.

“I didn’t want a trained actor. Experience in acting doesn’t really count in a play like this. We wanted the play to be a collective work of intellectuality. Histrionics have no role to play. But of course, all the four girls are too good at histrionics too,” she smiles.

Cast contribution was quite high in the play. Hailing from various backgrounds though, the 20-plus girls have one thing in common: feminist credentials. Revathi, a documentary and short film director, joined the crew along with Kalpana, a student of Madras Institute of Developmental Studies and an activist in Arivoli Iyakkam.

Ponni, a member of Alternative Law Forum and student of National Law School, Bangalore, and Kavimalar, a singer-activist in various feminist associations, were picked by Mangai.

“It is a different type of training for the play. We come together and acknowledge differences. Geetha had to grapple with girls every time she decided some changes in the dialogues,” Mangai explains.

Two months of practice was all needed to tune their performances.

“We only got to meet every Sunday, since each one of us was involved in our respective works. When we decided to stage our play, we looked for a historical locale and zeroed in on Queen Mary’s College.”

The overwhelming response served as a great morale booster for the crew. “People who came in late, presuming late start as in case of any event, had to stand out of the hall owing to overflowing turnouts,” Geetha reminisces.

Kala Kanavu has been staged in Madurai and Salem, with intense patronage from working class women. Their skit becomes a public space and interaction with the public has become an integral part of it.

The recent performance in the City too is a perfect case in point. Even as a character in the skit was quoting an instance from the life of actor K.P.Sundarambal, an audience got up to add few more instances to it.

“Everybody thought it was part of the skit. People can’t hold themselves when we discuss history,” says Geetha.

Defying the customary stage set up, Marapachhi prefers to include audience into their play by way of a unique set up. They stage it in a hall with people squatting around a cross-shaped mat.

The cast walks across the mat during the performance. Sitting amid audience will be Director and script writer Mangai and Geetha, who will voice their share of dialogues now and then.

Opinions are encouraged, new information is taken seriously and feedbacks are welcomed in the drama.

The images and information in posters that hang around the place of performance are turned into glossy posters with the help of Tara Publications of Geetha.

The immediate plan of Marapacchi is to publish a calendar on feminist history. “The whole talk about feminist backlash and lack of documentation on women’s role in politics will be included in the calendar,” Mangai informs.

The seemingly theatre group, with a couple of plays to its credit, drives a feminist movement in a subtle way.

“We never had vernacular feminism and feminist talks are never region specific. We wanted women to relate to feminists from similar backgrounds. For that, we are mining the history of women from various areas,” Geetha says.

The anti-cast crew has a lot of dreams. The three-year-old theatre group would venture into its next play shortly.

“It will be on ’how do women read Quran?’ It is quite an interesting observation and the script is still in the research stage,” says Geetha.

“Ours is an autonomous group. We strongly believe that research on such history can flourish only in active autonomy,” the director says, as the crew endorses with vibrant nodes.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail