What happens when you take India’s two-millennia-old epic the “Mahabharata” and retell it with an all-female cast?
That’s the experiment Stage Ensemble Theater Unit (SETU) explores in its performances at Belmont Town Hall this weekend of Girish Karnad’s 1995 play “The Fire and the Rain.” The script is inspired by and elaborates on the ancient tale of gods, feuds, revenge and star-crossed lovers.
“It’s an eye opener for men in the audience about their chauvinistic behavior. It’s also empowering for the cast as well as women in the audience,” director Subrata Das writes. “It is about giving women the opportunity to take on roles that were created for male actors holding aggressive, destructive, and violent characteristics. Male-chauvinism performed by women will bring to the audience’s attention the unspeakable male behavior that is often accepted as a norm in Indian society.”
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SETU—which the community theater troupe says means “bridge” in several Indian languages—aims to build bridges between Indian and Western cultures through theater. Recent performances of ancient epics and contemporary plays have been done with an eye toward thinking about empowering women and contemplating equality.
“The Fire and the Rain” is a sort of soap opera about a priestly family when a fire-sacrifice is being arranged by a king to beseech a god of rain to end years of famine and drought. The priestly patriarch is passed over for the major post of leading the ritual when his older son is appointed instead. While the son is busy with his new job, his wife has an affair with an old flame, his cousin, and his father rapes her. Meanwhile, a younger brother, bound by family duty and pride, pines for a woman whom he feels he can’t be with because she’s in a lower caste.
“The male characters are using women just for their pleasure, using them as a stepping stone, using them only when they need them for their physical desires, for revenge, and abandoning them when their purpose is served,” says Yogita Miharia, who plays the older brother and chief priest of the fire sacrifice. “These things are more acceptable when men do them. When women do it, it’s completely different. … When a woman shows their rage or their lust or their desire, it’s a little difficult to accept.”
Having women perform all the roles highlights “how male chauvinism works and all these violent emotions,” says Jayanti Bandyopadhyay, who co-founded the company with director Subrata Das in 2003. “How does it feel because women are stating it now?”
Photos copyright 2018 Greg Cook.
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