Sohaila Kapur's forthcoming productions, Tattoo and Ouch, talk about the exploitation women face at home and work. In a candid chat with Karan Bhardwaj, the thespian recounted her own experience of molestation
The open debates and discussions about physical abuse against women following the December 16 gangrape have inspired many women to come out in open and share their personal experiences. Not long back, theatre drama Nirbhaya staged several actors sharing their personal accounts of assault, be it at home or outside. Today, Sohaila Kapur is putting up her next production, Tattoo, based on a real life story which took place in Germany. It is a story of teenager, molested by her own father. “It is unthinkable of but newspapers are flooded with such reports. A father can rape his daughter. Just last week, a girl killed her dad to avenge the crime. I am glad that women are raising their voice and showing courage to discuss it in public,” says the thespian, who has kept the play original as she thinks “it is a universal theme and requires no adaptation.”
“Today I read a report how drugs and alcohol have made fathers in Punjab sexually molest infant daughters. It shows how relevant this theme is,” she says.
In 2009, when Kapur staged the same play for the first time, she saw people walking out. “Fathers are like demi-God in the patriarchal structure. You cannot question them. It’s unthinkable to accuse him of molestation. So people thought I put up a lie and scandalised my subject. My actors also dropped out because all of them had certain vision of their fathers at home. Now after December 16 rape case, they have come back and want to enact these stories. Previously, they were living in denial,” she says.
Kapur also showed a movie No Mercy Home to her actors as a part of homework. In the South Korean film, the protagonist is raped by her father. She fights the legal battle and ends up winning against all odds.
Her own family including mother, sisters and relatives were against her. “It’s traumatic enough for actors so think about the victims. I think it’s a story worth telling. We need to understand the psychology of rapists. Why is it they think that it is okay to suppress somebody sexuallyIJ We need to accept that it all starts within the families,” says the director, who herself faced assault while growing up. “Most of the women at some point of time have gone through exploitation. I remember as a kid, while I was playing in the park, a man started making sounds of birds. He made me sit in front of him and started rubbing himself on my body. I was barely seven but could understand something was terribly wrong. The guy, who used to pick me up from school, would put me sit in front of seat on bike and would fondle. Thankfully, nothing untoward happened but it made me feel very unclean. It made me look at my body differently. I was self-accusatory. When I was growing up, I felt rage and guilt. I began to think that I provoked them somewhere. There were some cases of older relatives trying to abuse me. It was sickening,” she recounts. Kapur is also planning to have an interactive session after the play where the audience could share their experiences.
Tattoo is written by Dea loher, a German writer. “I think she might have gone through certain experiences to emote this kind of feeling on paper. Each scene opens like a chapter in itself,” says Kapur, who is staging two plays at the Summer Theatre Festival organised by Behroopiya Entertainers. The other play, Ouch, which will open on Sunday, is also an adaptation of German play Creeps (by lutz Hubner). It is a story of three girls attempting to find space in the world of entertainment with a backdrop of a reality show.
Kapur first put up the play two months before Bigg Boss made its TV debut.
“It became an instant hit as reality shows were still turning into head-turners. The three characters come from different parts of India and have contrasting backgrounds. The play though a comedy, leaves a message that TV is voyeuristic and can make people perform like little monkeys. little children are performing and their mothers are bursting into tears if they don’t win. They are pushed into this business for the sake of money,” she says.