19 Activist Theatre in India: Dina Mehta’s Getting away with Murder
Dr. Saurabhi Sarmah
A theatrical piece can be considered as activist when it makes an effort to represent and critique the existing social problems, and shows the possible means of overcoming them. The term activism involves generating awareness on various social, cultural and political evils. Activism can be a direct activism like political activism or economic activism to bring about political and economic changes, or it can be an indirect form of activism like representing and critiquing the social problems in literature.
Among all the art forms, theatre has a great scope for becoming an agent for social change. Each play carries the possibilities performance within it; which is an altogether different experience that can turn a work art into an event; an event where audience can also participate and engage with the actor’s activities. So, what is this performance aspect of a play? The performance aspect of a play is that part which establishes a direct connection between the characters and audience by turning written script into a visual one. Performance of a play is received by a large group of people together belonging to different social layers. It is a collective experience by huge gathering and certainly a different from of experience than the mere “reading” a play individually and keeps the play open for numerous interpretations. Performance involves real physical beings which can enhance its impact on the audience. Hence, theatre has an ample scope for activism as it has it’s “doing” aspect apart from its “written” aspect. A theatrical piece can project our surrounding both verbally and visually, and perform the role of an agent for social change by reflecting the social evils as well as generating awareness on them. Thus, a theatrical performance can be used to question and defy the oppressive social norms, and herein lies the activist aspect of theatre.
Peter Caster, one of the scholars of language and literature, makes two sub-divisions of the concept of performance as activism in his essay on “Staging Prisons: Performance, Activism, and Social Bodies”. The first is staged activism, social protest that employs tactics of performance while the second is activist performance which is more conventional stage drama deliberately located within a particular political project (2004:108). A piece of theatre falls into the second category when we stage a play with a specific goal in our mind. However, while performing a play, a great deal depends on the director’s motive and his manner of representation to make a theatrical performance an activist one.
The whole concept of theatre having the capacity to bring social changes seems to emerge from the ideas of the German playwright and director Bertolt Brecht. Brecht, following the Marxist perspective, strategizes his play to appeal to the intellect of his audience. His believes that theatre should educate its audience to bring about socially responsible changes and make the audience contemplate over the social issues rather than making them passive viewers. While using theatre for social change, Brecht devises the technique which is popularly known as ‘alienation effect’. “Alienation effect” is used to “make strange” the familiar aspects of the present realities to prevent audience’s emotional involvement with the characters and their actions so that the audience can critically and objectively evaluate the action of the characters.
Later on, Brecht becomes a source of inspiration for a number of subsequent theatre directors and playwrights like Augusto Boal, whose “theatre of the oppressed” is a significant attempt to protest the oppressive norms of everyday life through drama and performance. Boal’s aim is to erase the boundary between the spectators and performers in order to challenge the everyday realities. His theatre of the oppressed refers to a body of theatrical strategies for liberation that allow the spectators to participate in performance and become active agents of social change.
Like Brecht, Boal also believes that theatrical performance has the potential to make political and social changes. The chief purpose behind his formulation of “forum theatre” was to teach people about how to bring social changes by defying the oppressive norms. Forum theatre allows the spectators an opportunity to discover solutions to their problems by directly intervening in the theatrical event. In of his interviews by Richard Schechner and Michael Taussig, Boal says:
Another trend is noticeable in the field of world theatre in the 20th century which aims at exploring the transformative power of performance as well as the social responsibilities of the artist and the audience. This is initiated by the Yugoslavian performance artist Maria AbramoviĆ who likes to call herself as the ‘grandmother of performance art’. She uses her performances as a means of expressing and encountering violence, and tries to erase the boundary between the artist and the audience. Performance is used to blur the distinction between performance and everyday reality which is not merely understood and interpreted, but experienced directly. In Lips of Thomas, a performance by her, AbramoviĆ uses a razor to cut a five-pointed star in her abdomen, whips her back severely and lays motionless on a cross of ice for thirty minutes. She goes on physically harming her body until it is put to an end by the intervention of the spectators; who also experience shock and pain during the event as manifested in their physical expressions. Within the performance, she creates a situation that involves everyone present there. The spectators are not presented as an object to perceive and interpret an artefact; instead they are transformed into active participants or co- subjects dealing with a common .
Activism and Indian theatre:
Theatre as a means for activism to generate social changes is yet to develop in India unlike in the West. But thematically a number of playwrights have written plays which seem to carry the touch of activism. The plays of Vijay Tendulkar, Mahesh Dattani, Girish Karnad Manjula Padmanabhan Dina Mehta, Polie Sengupta and Abhisekh Majumdar to name a few, exhibit a concern for the current socio-cultural and political issues and how they affect the lives of common people. The thematic range of their plays is varied including a wide range of issues such as caste, patriarchy, class, nationalism, identity, gender, tradition, gender, violence, insurgency, condition of working classes, famines, psychological fragmentation, condition of women, familial and dowry problems and the Dalits. This very act of scripting plays on the crucial social problems could be regarded as a part of the activist agenda by the playwrights. It is an act of resistance against the existing social evils through literary imagination. To be enacted, the social issues must be voiced and scripted first and this is exactly what these playwrights have done.
Among the contemporary Indian playwright, it is Mahesh Dattani who has made a considerable effort to use theatre for staging the oppressive norms of the Indian society which silence the voice of the minorities like the gays, lesbians, transgender and women. Recognising the potentialities of theatre for social change and activism, Dattani says, in one of his interviews by Erin. B. Mee, that “Since I’ve realised the potential of theatre as an agent, if not for social change, at least for reflection, I can’t be frivolous about it anymore. Unless I have something strong to present, I wouldn’t write” (in Multani 2007: 158). For example, social activism is the key intention behind his well-known play Thirty Days in September. Dattani had written this play commissioned by RAHI— a support group that helps the women survivors of incest.
But, in India, we don’t see any such radical activism via theatre as we see in the context of the West. What we mainly see in India is the conventional stage drama located within a particular political project that aims to represent and thereby question and defy the social evils. However, certain attempts of staged activism were made in the past by theatre persons like Safdar Hashmi through street theatre to generate awareness on social issues. Safdar Hashmi was killed by police while doing a street play and Shettal Sathe and Sachin Mali, the two members of Kabir Kala Manch (KKM), a Pune-based cultural group that highlights the plight of the Dalit community among other cultural issue, also had to suffer a lot in hands of government. This is how the whole scenario goes in the Indian context.
Writing as a means of resistance/activism:
As it has already been discussed, many playwrights have taken up writing as a means of raising their voice of protest against the various social evils which have an oppressive impact on the lives of the common people. Indian writing in English contains a number of playwrights both male and female who raise their voice of protest against various social problems, mainly the problems faced by women in Indian society. These playwrights in fact attempt to represent various polemical and serious issues such as gender, caste, patriarchy, politics, sexuality, violence, social and economic exploitation, child abuse, etc. that affect our everyday life. Their writings seem to be the result of their serious concern and empathetic understanding of these social evils and their adverse impact on common people. Writing becomes a means for voicing resistance by raising their concerns through it and making people conscious about the realities surrounding them.
Getting Away with Murder as an Activist play
Getting Away with Murder deals with the problem of violence against women and the female children that is rampant in Indian society. The play represents the story of Sonali who is a victim of child sexual abuse, and the after effects of this violent incident on her adult life. Alongside, the play also represents the agonised lives of a couple of other young women such as Mallika, Raziya, and Thelma. They all are victims of ‘gender specific’ violence in some ways or the other. Thus, the play aims at representing the presence of various covert and overt forms of violence against women in Indian society and how such acts of violence and abuse affect the characters’ private and public life.
The activist note of the play lies in the very act of scripting a play basis on a problem which really needs serious public and political attention and intervention. Not only Mehta has chosen social realism as her mode of representation to represent the society as it is, but her play also stands as a critique of the society which oppresses its women, and thereby her writing offers a resistance to the same. It is a kind of resistance against the social evils by using the power of literary imagination.
Dealing with the abuse experienced by Sonali, the chief protagonist, the play takes us to the lives of a number of women characters who experience various forms of abuse in their everyday life. Despite being well educated and having a modern outlook, these women fail to escape sufferings. The play makes it clear that the traditional constraints that the society maintains towards its women are so deep rooted in the mind of women that they fail to welcome the changes practically and still conform to the constraints/boundaries created by the tradition.
The play begins at a restaurant where Malu (Mallika) is waiting for her friend Sonali to join her. The beginning introduces a very common problem that women face in their everyday life from various strangers. A stranger in the restaurant disturbs her so much she is forced to leave before Sonali reaches. The vulnerability of women to such obnoxious kinds of behaviour by men is quite common in public places; it works to restrict their personal liberty to move/act freely. First, the stranger ogles at her, then takes up her fallen serviette and approaches her to give it back. No matter, how she tries to avoid him, he follows her. The reader/audience can easily perceive the sexual innuendos motivating his behaviour:
Stanger: I’ve finished breakfast also. Such a wet day, but you don’t have to worry. My car is waiting outside.
Malu: So is mine. Get lost, mister.
Malu not only faces abuse by such outsiders, her partner Mr Pinglay also tries to abuse her in her own office. For Pinglay, women are only good for PR or secretarial jobs at office and also for the purpose of buttering men. He says: “Now Mallikaji, who better than a woman when it comes to buttering up a man, eh? … ”(68).Through characters like Pinglay, Mehta has represented the dominant attitude towards women as merely object of sex. Even, the typist in her food stuff agency also undergoes the same in the hands of Pinglay. In fact, Thelma being a low-rank employee suffers much than Mallika which compels her to resign from her job. One day Pinglay finds Thelma making a long distance phone call. Taking advantage of this, he starts blackmailing her saying that if he discloses this fact before Mallika, Thelma would be dismissed. The fear of losing her job requires Thelma to obey Pinglay who goes on abusing her by various means. Being unable to tolerate Pinglay’s continued wicked gestures and vulgar talks, she decides to quit.
However, Malu strategically saves Thelma from Pinglay’s trap when Thelma confides in her and tells her about her sufferings at Pinglay’s hand. Malu’s stance here indicates the emerging changes pertaining to women’s empowerment in Indian society. Dina Mehta not only represents the various forms of visible and invisible violence against women, but also shows the presence of such strong forces within women which can challenge the order of things. Malu is capable of challenging the conspiracies of the male world (represented by Pinglay); she protects Thelma from suffering further humiliation and psychological abuse perpetrated by Pinglay.
Like Mahesh Dattani’s Thirty Days in September, which is an overt activist play, this play also deals with the long lasting after-effects of sexual victimization of female children. Not only is the victim affected by such violent acts, the lives of other people associated with the victim also get affected, and the situations give rise to further violence and chaos. The same happens in Sonali’s case. Sonali, who was sexually abused by her uncle Narotam at age eight, is unable to come out of the trauma of violence she experienced as a child and it affects her adult life. Sonali’s strange behaviour is nothing but the direct outcome of her abused past. This unusual behaviour on Sonali’s part – throwing of the coffee things crashing to the floor in the restaurant (while revealing her thoughts before Malu) may be seen as visual sign on stage suggesting her unstable mental condition. Her acute headache, hysterical reactions often and her hidden/unspecified anger at things resemble the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder; which seems to be result of her experience of childhood sexual abuse. The term post-traumatic stress refers to the psychological disturbance that occurs after observing, experiencing or being involved in a severely traumatic or horrifying event. In many cases the survivors of child sexual abuse suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder which is an outcome of undergoing deep psychological/physical violence in the past. Mehta effectively portrays the hysterical state of Sonali’s mind by using appropriate verbal and visual signs:
Sonali (hysterical now): Stop it! Stop it! When I listen carefully to my
thoughts, it’s mother’s voice I hear! And I remember all the things she
taught me. And I remember anger from the past (with one sweep of her
hand she sends the coffee things crashing to the floor).
The reader can feel the kind of trauma undergone by Sonali in her childhood. Instead of providing scope for direct on-stage representation of this incident, Mehta represents it through the words of Gopal who is an eye-witness to this horrible act. Mehta seems to be aware of the negative impact of direct visual representation of such violent acts on stage. The play mainly focuses on the traumatic after effects of this violent act on Sonali and her close ones. Mehta reveals this troubled past that Sonali carries with her through the dialogues of Gopal, her only brother:
Gopal: I guess there is no…less brutal way of saying that my sister
was sexually abused…from the time she was8 years old. And Sonali
was 12 when Uncle Narotam broke his head. So you can imagine
…night after night coming to her bed…He…threatened her into
silence…and submission…the screams swallowed must still be
tearing her up inside…And I did nothing to help her, nothing.
Her unusual behaviour along with the change in her voice indicates her hidden psychological scars. She is unable to free herself from the terrifying memories of her being sexually abused as a child. She often regresses into her childish voice behaving like an eight year old girl; she frequently looks at the mirror and gazes at her face intently. Again, in the next moment, she regains her adult voice, squirms, and laughs loudly. A close look at her character reveals that the playwright has made a concentrated attempt to highlight the presence of child sexual abuse in our society so that the reader can feel the intense damage caused to a woman’s life by such crimes. And herein the activist of the play lies. Mehta not only represents, but her work stands as a critic of such heinous crime against the female children.
The play also exposes the traditional notion associated with the birth of a female child and the preference for the boy child. Sonali’s mother neglects her and cares only for Gopal which is evident from Sonali’s speech: “My mother never loved me. She had eyes only for Gopal…and for him” (2000: 86). Here Sonali’s mother propagates the traditional patriarchal attitude that considers women as mere objects of fulfilling men’s sexual needs. Sonali’s dialogues in this respect are significant when she says: “…Mother told me that just as a scorpion enjoys stinging people withal the pent-up venom in its tail, lordly men desire to sting their women—and a good wife always lets her husband to do so…”(2000: 86). Here the playwright critics the process of socialization which compels women to accept this status of subjugation.
Mehta also brings in focus the issue of violence begetting violence in Getting Away with Murder. This is very much apparent in Sonali’s case who not only suffers violence but also indulges in further violent acts as the perpetrator. Being unable to free herself from the memories of her violent past and having understood the kind of insecurity a female child has to face after her birth, Sonali decides to undergo the amniocentesis test for the second time so as to find out whether the foetus is male or female; planning to abort it if female. Thus she inherits the violent tradition of female foeticide and destroys her first foetus without taking any medical help.
Here, the playwright portrays a mother who herself is a victim of sexual violence and commits another act of violence against her own unborn female child, thereby turning herself into an executor of the same. With creating a character like Sonali, Mehta shows the interconnectedness between various instances of violence and exposes the drawback of the social system that shapes women’s mentality in such a manner.
In Getting Away with Murder, Mehta also expose the superstitious beliefs that make women suffer. As Sonali says: “Well, my mother always said that a woman’s failure to bear a. Son is just a retribution for misdeeds in her past life”. All such experiences compel Sonali to accept that “… to be born a girl is to be subjected to violence and servitude! I know, I know” (2000: 63). So, she considers her act of female foeticide as a sign of her emancipation; she says: “Call it what you like. It is still my body and my choice. A symbol of my emancipation” .
The play shows us that a well-educated and professional woman like Raziya is also not free from the violence inherent in the traditional system. She suffers for not being able to give birth to a baby whereas the problem lies with her husband Habib. A doctor by profession, Raziya accepts her condition as the lot of a ‘barren woman’ and encourages Habib to get married to Zameena. Through the portrayal of Raziya, Mehta shows the complex network of factors that compel women to accept violence tacitly. In Getting Away with Murder, Dina Mehta draws attention to the fact that in many cases it is the mind-set of women which is not ready to defy the norms of patriarchy. Mehta shows that this mentality is so deep rooted in the minds of women that even modern and educated women like Sonali, Raziya and Mallika also fail to break the boundaries created by the gendered society. As Raziya aptly says: “… the enemy is within, don’t you see? It is in our minds, Mallika, that we are underlings!.
In the same play, Dina Mehta also brings into discussion another form of violence that poor women are susceptible to in the form of witch killing. She not only portrays the ways in which women are physically abused once they are declared witches; but also talks about the various reasons behind this systematic killing of women by branding them as witches. The play clearly represents that witch killing is not generated by merely superstitions and ignorance. At its deep level, it seems to be guided by the political interest of the family members and relatives of the victim, and the upper social classes. Gopal’s speech in this context is powerful enough to highlight the various triggers of witch killing:
Gopal: Ignorance is not the only factor today – the persecution is prompted by lust, caste tensions, greed for land. In the Singbhum district alone 200 women are killed as witches every year. Male relatives move in on their land…
The play not only represents the presence of these crimes against women, but also brings into focus the indifference shown by the legal system and police towards such crimes. This is evident in the case of Dulkha Devi who is even killed in front of a police station by turning her into a witch and torturing her publicly. Besides, the religious system in India also to a certain extent supports this systematic killing of women. For example, the village priest plays the major role in turning Dulkha Devi into a witch. Because she had once repulsed the priest’s advances towards her; so the priest takes his revenge by pronouncing her a witch. Apart from the story of Dulkha Devi, the playwright provides various such instances where women and their daughters fall pray to witch hunting. The male relatives of these people accuse them of practicing witch-craft with the intention of usurping their land and other properties. Thus, the play represents a social issue which is still dominant in many parts of our country making the lives of the poor and uneducated women miserable. Such killing of women in the name of witch hunting is still going on even in the 21st century. Not only in the districts of Bihar (as mentioned in the play), its presence can be seen in certain districts of Assam and other states also.
By representing the various forms of violence women experience in the Indian society, the playwright seems to communicate the message that despite the unprecedented ‘modern’ growth that the society has seen in various fields, women in India are still vulnerable to various abuses. And for this, partly responsible is women’s traditional mind-set. So, what is more important seems to be the acquisition of a modern mind-set (both by men and women) to counter such instances of violence against women. However, the play also shows the emergence of a somewhat different frame of mind in the male world. The attitude to support women and transform their present condition as merely sex objects and to establish their autonomy is seen in the characters like Anil and Gopal. Anil gives her wife Sonali a new life by supporting her throughout their conjugal life. On the other hand, Gopal practically helps the victims of witch killing; he even jointly plans with Malu to adopt Minzari’s daughter (Minzari was beaten to death after being declared a witch).
If we look at the relation between theatre and human rights as pointed by Paul Rae, we can definitely consider Getting Away with Murder as an activist play advocating for the basic human rights of women and the female child. Paul Rae says that human rights are something worth fighting for and theatre making is one way of fighting for them. Theatre is a progressive activity and addressing human rights issues is one of the ways of ensuring its social significance. He cites the examples of many theatre persons like Wole Soyinka, Augusto Boal, Safdar Hashmi to name a few who have suffered exile or punishment for making theatre. Their actions and experiences reveal how theatre has been used to represent the violation of human rights. Although Getting Away with Murder does not stands for radical and overt activism, the activism elements of the play cannot be ignored given the issues represented in the play. The playwright represents the picture of society which does not consider its women as human beings and thereby violate their rights. Mehta critiques such violation of women’s right and the imposed restriction on their autonomy by representing them in literature. It is a kind of resistance via literary imagination, and the play stands for her emphatic understanding of the actual realities concerning women.
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Reference
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