The set-up is dark and grim, just like the stories that unfold there. It takes a while to realise that the characters playing their parts are not just actors, but real-life survivors of the most brutal forms of violence and assault.
The five voices are different. But the stories, eerily similar, merge into one: that of the young physiotherapist who was raped on a bus in Delhi in December 2012, and died later.
‘Nirbhaya,’ a play by South African director Yael Farber, made its debut on the Indian stage on Monday. The idea emerged after the gang rape in Delhi. “We will never know what the young woman endured but I believe it is important to depict the enormity of the savageness of the assault,” Ms Farber said.
The performers pace across the stage, their right arm held up; the thumb, index and middle fingers pointing toward the sky: a symbol of speaking out. There is a sense of urgency in their movements. They rush to break the silence.
Amid all this, a haunting presence of ‘Nirbhaya’ is felt. Now through music. Now through dialogue.
“The idea of the play is to speak out against violence, because if you don’t, you allow violence to thrive,” said Poorna Jagannathan, one of the characters in the play who got the courage to speak about her experience only after the news of the Delhi gang rape broke out. Priyanka Bose, too, found her voice, after the same incident. “I felt insecure when Nirbhaya died. I looked at my daughter that day and decided this was not the life I wanted for her. I decided to break the silence,” said Ms Bose.
Sneha Jawle uses the stage to further her search of her son, Tej. Ms Jawle sustained 42 per cent burn injuries when her former husband and in-laws harassed her for dowry. They took her son away nine years ago when he was only five. “I hope he hears my story and comes to me,” she said.
The play did well at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August, and later received Amnesty International’s Freedom of Expression Award. After playing in Mumbai, the team will go to Delhi and Bangalore.
