Four monologues, written by Nobel laureate playwright Dario Fo and Franca Rame, will reflect the atrocities against women in the play Orgasm. The director Kanchan Ujjal tells Karan Bhardwaj how women die several deaths every day
In March 1973, a few fascist men in Italy abducted Franca Rame, raped her at gunpoint, burnt her with cigarettes, slashed her body with razor blades and left her in a park. Rame, wife of playwright Dario Fo, underwent therapies for four months and later returned to theatre with her monologue. She described her experience, how after the tragic incident, the police officials further ridiculed her. ‘Did you experience orgasmIJ’ was one of the questions she faced.
The monologue will be replayed today in a theatrical piece titled Orgasm at Alliance Francaise. The play, directed by Kanchan Ujjal, narrates four monologues written by Fo and Rame. They represent different issues women have been facing. “These soliloquies though written decades ago are even relevant in our times. Modern women, in any part of the world, are subjected to exploitation in ways more than one,” says Ujjal.
The first piece called Waking Up shows a middle class woman engrossed in her routine life. The protagonist is looking after her baby, washing clothes, cleaning the mess and searching a missing key. She also looks for her bus pass only to realise that it was Sunday. “The lady is visibly suppressed and has totally lost her identity,” says the director. A Woman Alone has her protagonist talking to her imaginary neighbour, sharing details how she has been locked inside the house by her husband. She is continuously teased by her pervert brother-in-law. She gets so frustrated that she ends up killing everyone around her. We All Have The Same Story talks about pregnancy depression. A teenager gets pregnant of her boyfriend’s baby. While the guy runs away, the girl gives birth to a baby bearing all the societal pressures and taboos. last monologue, Rape, shares Rame’s horrifying experience of those 30 minutes when she was brutally molested.
The director says the stories are weaved in a humorous format. “There’s an engaging blend of mime, burlesque and stand-up comedy. You may laugh at the moment but later you realise what you were laughing at. There are humorous situations and anecdotes,” says Ujjal. like, in the first monologue, the woman looks at a bicarbonate jar which has sugar in it and realises how she bathed her baby with the same liquid, who attracts flies in his playway school.
Why the title OrgasmIJ “If you go by the dictionary, orgasm means a tiny little death. In all the stories, the sufferings and oppression lead to tiny deaths,” informs Ujjal, co-director of theatre group Saanjha Sapnaa. Of late, a lot of women are coming out and sharing their real stories on stage. Before this, stage-act Nirbhaya had six celebrated artistes narrating real stories of their life. “Theatre, for artistes and the audience, acts as a cathartic. It is letting women talk openly about issues we are always scared to discuss. When I and my actresses say this, that means, they are not alone. It’s also helping women overcome the guilt which they bear after any untoward incident,” she says. Ujjal’s next play is Cock. It’s about a guy who’s struggling to comprehend his sexual orientation. “He falls in a relationship with a guy and later realises he is not gay. However, he’s caught in a labyrinth of thoughts and expressions,” she informs.