The third day of Theatre Fest, 2013 being organised by REACH presented an interesting mix of a musical, a monologue and adaptations of short stories produced by Rangkarmee on Monday evening. The productions raised lingering questions about subjects of a bygone era that appear to be relevant even today.
These plays were Mayyat, a musical depicted through songs of Kabir, Subha- reworked from Dario Fo's and Franca Rame's Waking Up coupled with Hindi adaptations of Bertolt Brecht's anti-Nazi
The Jewish Wife and of Ulrike Meinhoff, fictionalisation of the controversial life of this German journalist who later turned to a left-wing militant.
Usha Ganguly directed and acted in these performances. In Subha, she painted a lifelike picture of the working class
status of the central character, successfully bringing out the vexation and disillusionment.
The short play depicted the frustration of a working wife trying to cope with her two-fold responsibilities as a mother and a worker in a factory. The piece was a strong performance by Ganguly in a minimalist natural setting.
While Rame's original screenplay had focused on the conditions of women in Italy in the early 20th century, it was not difficult to relate it to the Indian situation. In theone- woman show, Ganguly enacted a factory worker reliving a fight she has had with her husband. She is raving at him about how lazy he is and how he doesn't even talk to her anymore. It dwelt on the heavy burden that working women have to put up with.
Not only do they work full-time but they are often expected to do everything that a traditional housewife would do: cook, clean, take care of the children etc, while the man relaxes from a hard day of working the same hours his wife did.
The Jewish Wife is part of a series of sketches that form the play Fear and Misery of the Third Reich alternatively known as The Private life of the Master Race. "When the curtain goes up, we see a restless and nervour Judith Keith packing her bags. She then calls a few people to tell them that she's leaving for Amsterdam for a few weeks.
The phone calls done she turns to a chair and starts rehearsing what she is going to say to her husband about the trip. They can't face each other anymore. She is a Jew married to an Aryan and Hitler's propaganda is beginning to infiltrate their lives. Fritz, a surgeon, has been facing some unpleasantness at work on her account and she worries it is all going to get much worse. Judith then lashes out at the powers that have divided the country and its people. Fritz comes home and Judith tells him she is going, desperately hoping that he will stop her. But he doesn't. As the curtain falls, Fritz hands her the fur coat that she won't need until next winter." As interpreted by Ganguly, "Judith was a beloved wife, a friend, a bridge player and housewife, but now she is only Jewish".
The third short adaptation was a biographical portrayal of Ulrike Meinhof, a German left-wing militant born in 1934. Having begun her career as a committed journalist, with konkret she underwent a severe character alteration and became a militant, abetting the murders of many. She co-founded the Red Army Faction in 1970, was arrested in 1972 and incriminated for multiple homicides and the establishment of a felonious association. Before the trial concluded, Meinhof was found hanged in her prison cell in 1976.
The musical Mayyat, told the story of a Dalit man who is converted to a Brahmin for only a day, as a part of a ritual in Aurangabad village. lakha, as a Brahmin prays that his disabled son be cured, nut as the day ends, he falls sick and an inter-caste skirmish to disown him breaks out. In the end, lakha dies, a fallen prey to class-based aversion.