The final testimonies that the dead leave behind, especially those who have died young, carry this sense of utter futility, and the lingering after-taste of lives snuffed out too early. In popular culture, each premature final exit marks the spawning of a freshly minted icon, its flame now ordained to smoulder for posterity. Rohith Vemula’s suicide note became the ultimate political statement perhaps intended as a manifesto for change. Reyhaneh Jabbari, the Iranian woman hanged at 26 for killing the man who had allegedly attempted to rape her, left behind a poignant voice message for her mother. These are forlorn human documents of breathtaking irony, because the words speak of intensely sensitive souls who seem to have a grip upon the very meaning of life itself. Yet, they have been forsaken by it, whether it is by their own volition or not.
Before the ink has even dried on the page, these communiqués quickly become ‘texts’ for theatre — a kind of insta-material for performance, that packs a wallop before even the first ticket is sold. It is, after all, a real person’s authentic soul placed in the public domain, open to be deconstructed and duly harnessed for the common causes that affect their respective niches. The Jana Natya Manch (Janam) recently presented The Last Letter , based on Vemula’s last stand, and actor-director Faezeh Jalali gave us 7/7/07, a devised ensemble work that pieced together fragments from Jabbari’s brief life.
Jalali’s production recently won a prize for best ensemble and is touring in the south this week, having performed its 15th show at Pondicherry’s Adishakti Theatre on Sunday. Indeed, Jalali has put together a spirited cast of mostly female actors, some of whom are alumni of the Drama School, Mumbai, where she is part of the faculty. Suruchi Aulakh is the most experienced hand on board, while Natasha Singh bears a striking resemblance to Jabbari. Three male actors perform a docket of supporting parts. Jalali’s directorial choices are certainly interesting — the freeze-framing of certain pivotal moments or the foreshadowing of events. The devised set-pieces move into one another with clean, deft transitions that create a linearity that flows well. For the most part, the actors submit readily to being cogs in a wheel, and this adds to the synergy on display, that is such an important and alluring ingredient of group collaborations.
However, this considered approach to the technical aspects of the story-telling is belied by the shrill tenor of the piece. 7/7/07 builds its narrative around the evening (as referred to by the eponymous date) of the encounter between an incongruously child-like Jabbari and Morteza Sarbandi, the man she killed. The incident of sexual assault is illustrated not once, but several times, and by many actors in turn. This is perhaps to indicate the constant reliving and reiterating of trauma by rape victims at the altar of miscarriage of justice, but it makes for discomfiting viewing. Do we really need to pay to see women assaulted in the theatre, for the underlying point behind it all to hit home?
Jabbari’s voice message, that has reached us via a transcript made available by the National Council of Resistance in Iran, marks her out as a woman of great compassion and strength but not without a semblance of outrage at what she had been put through. Yet her approach to retribution is stoic. She doesn't concern herself with clemency certainly but there is a nobility to her leaving the fates of her oppressors in the hands of divinity. Her essential humanity comes across in her request to having her organs donated upon her death. Her moral conflicts seem much more personal, more inward. Her questions are intimate and speak of a radiance of soul, perhaps arrived upon after years of incarceration, which included spells of solitary confinement. This was seven years of great silences and much stock-taking.
This gravitas is missing from the multiple Reyhanehs propped up by 7/7/07 . The women in Jalali’s ensemble do little to arrest their fervency. It isn’t very clear if these anguished voices emanate from Jabbari or from what is being projected upon her — she becomes a cipher for the victimhood of women. When the women start shouting ‘I am Reyhaneh Jabbari. I am not a murderer,’ it is hard to take them at face value despite the moment’s emotive charge. The multiplicity of voices adds to the stringency of performance with all the finesse of a sledgehammer. The choreographed spiel then leads to a doleful Iranian ballad, which in turn segues into the cruel voices of her captors. Here, the dramatisation of legal procedure seems tritely executed.
I am struck by how much of Jalali’s play has elements of street theatre — the same declamation, the same outrightness, the same smugness of cause, in which, unfortunately, subtleties fall between the cracks.
For Janam, their Vemula excursion is everything it says on the cover, and nothing else besides. The broad strokes is the language. For Jalali, they need to be dispensed with, given the spectrum of voices, devices and physical grammar that is at her disposal, of which her actors frequently display flashes of dexterity.
The author is a freelance writer and theatre critic
