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Stages of light and darkness
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Women directors from across Asia got together for the Poorva Festival organised in New Delhi this past week. Apart from stage presentations on a range of themes, GOWRI RAMNARAYAN found they were game for feisty discussions and lusty criticism... .
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Veenapani Chawla.
`MAKING CHOCOLATE maybe sensuous, but what's sexy about jalebi and pakora? You cannot transpose something from one culture to another and expect the same results," says a strong voice. Another replies, "Eating maybe sensuous, but cooking can't be anything but a tyrannical activity, as you saw from the subdued part played by the cooking crew." A third voice from Japan declares, "But the `cooks' used their pots, ladles, grinding stones and rollers to create a subtext of rhythms." Others applaud the arresting visuals, as when recipes for aphrodisiacs are intoned from a high stool framed in light shafts, or when a woman turns white under a rain of flour.
Such hot, spicy discussions could be tasted in the theatre foyers at Poorva, the weeklong Asian Women Directors Theatre Festival, organised in New Delhi by Natarang Pratishthan and the National School of Drama in collaboration with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. Like this review of Neelam Mansingh Chowdhry's "Kitchen Katha", every response testified to attentive viewing at this unique event, a first of its kind, with 21 plays from Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, the Philippines and India. Nor were the foreign productions spared. The Cambodian "Glass Box" sparked debate: doesn't retaining the elaborate costume and classical dance form for depicting the dilemmas of a contemporary woman make for exotic parody?
Pornrat Damrhung.
The frank critiquing during the morning sessions with the directors amazed some of the foreign delegates. "We don't interpret or argue so much," says Pornrat Damrhung from Thailand. "Indian directors seem to do a lot of research. They also put more of themselves into their work; they have the freedom to do it. What I saw here makes me feel I too should experiment more, depend less on the given text."
Sineenadh Keitprapai, another young director from the same country finds the discussions "quite scary. You see, I work more on instinct, don't think that much. You have to be very confident to be able to handle that kind of relentless enquiry." Catherine Diamond who teaches theatre at the Soochow University, Taiwan, adds, "A lot of Asian cultures do not promote direct critical discourse, especially by women. But India seems to have it."
Other South Asian delegates express surprise at the fact that the Indian theatre features so many older women in significant roles, whereas the norm in their countries is to centre stage young actors. Ask them whether they will now think of doing the same and you get a cautious, "We'll see."
Cecilia G. Arriola.
Not that Poorva has no platform for the young. Ebullient comedy came from the newly formed "Mandala" which grew out of director Mita Vasisht's work in remand homes with rescued trafficked girls in Mumbai. While many regretted the excessive imagery in J. Shailaja's "Thathri", no one was untouched by its buoyant imagination. The youthful high spirits in "Panaw", a musical from the Philippines moved by its teamwork, and by its avoidance of self-pity and melodrama in dealing with wife beating and violence.
Though on day one Vijaya Mehta and Usha Ganguli condemned the "woman director" label as irrelevant, a needless marginalization, Poorva was welcomed by most participants as something that brought an intense focus to the collective exploration. "To see B. Jayashree, Veenapani Chawla, Anuradha Kapur, Kirti Jain, Nadira Babbar and Maya Rao all together on and off the stage is an experience to remember," said one.
"It was good to see plays by women directors from Asia whose vision and experience are similar to ours," said another, shell-shocked after "Night Please Go Faster" which depicted the atrocities perpetrated in Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge, not so long ago. The soft spoken director Nou Sandab declared that her intention was not to replay grief, but to warn others to be watchful so that similar outrages do not take place in their countries. Her voice, along with the voices of others at the festival, became a reminder of the role of theatre amidst the gathering of dark forces in our world.
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