You are seen as a maker of women’s theatre
When I started out, it wasn’t a conscious decision to create only works about women. I had dabbled in theatre for a while but it was with Whay Mee Savitribai that I first found my footing in this ethos. Savitribai Phule is one of the representative characters of India, you can say. The piece was first performed in 1989, in Pune and I continue to perform it, like this week at Bhopal. So, over the course of almost 2,500 shows, it’s almost as if the spirit of Savitribai has been guiding me and my understanding of issues that confront women. While touring with the Savitribai piece, I found myself linked into a new world of female activism and thinking. The fact is, women make for very interesting subjects. When I was curious about tamasha , I wrote my piece on a Lavani dancer. I spent several months with female sex workers and created two works. While researching Bayaa Daar Ughad , I chanced upon countless abhanga (devotional poems) by women. People talk about Tukaram and Dyaneshwar, and they are great. But our society’s lens is never focused on what women also achieved. I had the impulse to bring out these forgotten abhanga s.
People are usually confused about what feminism actually entails
There is certainly this false assumption that feminists are against men. I must say that it is because of my feminism that I can understand my husband, for instance. I can see the effects of patriarchy in him, and the conditioning modes of behaviour that he had appropriated since an early age. His mindset was naturally that of a pucca purush (typical man). The atmosphere engendered by my work in theatre allowed me to create the bridges between us. In fact, he has almost come to believe that parity has been restored between men and women. I remind him of the world beyond that he is not exposed to.
Chitragoshti, the play you wrote on Sudhir Patwardhan’s paintings, is a rare instance of you taking up a male subject
Well, those paintings have a social context. There is a strong representation of the kamgar vishwa (working class culture) in them. Feminism allowed me to look at society at large, at people from all kinds of oppressed classes. So, even though Chitragoshti is not based on the experiences of women, there is much in its universe that we can relate to. If my work seems predicated by my gender, so be it. However, I would say I am more interested in dismantling the systems of oppression around me. For instance, I had also done a play on LGBT rights.
Coming back to Bayaa Daar Ughad , there is an implication that these so-called women saints were actually escaping the drudge of domesticity, rather than responding to the call of spirituality
These women saints undertook the pai wari (pilgrimage) from Dehu to Pandharpur during the 13th and 19th century. Expressing their love or devotion to Vithal was the medium with which they could come out of their homes. This is not something I have speculated. The specific language used in the abhanga s underline this. One lady doesn’t mince words as she writes of herself as a wanderer who has prostituted herself for Vithal. Another talks of her veil falling down as she leaves home to meet him. One wrote to her husband that he had control over her body, but never over her mind. There was a male scholar who asserted that the abhanga s were actually written by men. Tell me, which man can write about an experience of unbridled feminine freedom with such abandon? The depictions of women by men are so conservative, which these saints were anything but.
There is a strong intersectional thrust in works like Aaydaan , where you take up the autobiography of one of the first Dalit women to be educated, Urmila Pawar
Ramu Ramanathan had wanted me to take up Urmila’s book for a long time. When I took it up for performance, I was able to understand the nature of her accomplishments. Studying as a Dalit girl, then graduating, taking up a job, writing. I was born into a Brahmin family, so my privilege had a lot to do with my own education, even if both of us can trace our education to the efforts of Savitribai, more than a century ago. In the time I spent with Urmila, I was able to observe the effects of centuries of subjugation in her persona. Despite being such an established writer, she is very diffident, very wary of how she is being perceived, very attention-shy. Trappings that I can take for granted so easily are what she hasn’t fully acquired for herself. Much of her life seems to be predicated by the circumstances of her birth because of how the odds are stacked against Dalits to this day.
So the confidence and forthrightness that we see in the three performers of Aaydaan , is that an extension of your own personality, rather than hers?
Not at all. Ultimately, her written voice is powerful and unhesitatingly candid. She may have qualms about speaking about many incidents in her personal life, like her fights with her husband, but in her book she has been unapologetic, and her candour is striking. The strength reflected by the three actors who play her is entirely hers. And one of the reasons why I have used three actors, rather than just one, is because Aaydaan is the story of every woman, and specifically, every Dalit woman.
Aaydaan will be performed in Hindi at Sitara Studio, Dadar (West) at 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Sunday. See insider.in
