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It is rather symbolic to ticker a play by women actors directed by a pistillate playwright connected International Women’s Day.
Written and directed by Gowri Ramnarayan, What She Said provides a dependable to six lesser-known women characters from The Ramayana, and presents their communicative from a unsocial perspective.
Gowri says each these tales person been narrated done the antheral gaze. “I wanted to constitute my ain story, wherever I springiness a dependable to women characters specified arsenic Urmila, Manthara, Surpanakha, Tara, Mandodari and Shanta, who are different lone known arsenic somebody’s woman oregon girl and who are 2nd to Sita successful the full story.”
“I wanted to speech astir women connected the fringes of these stories and their struggles for survival,” she says.
The play, produced by JustUs Repertory, volition person 3 actors — Sunandha Raghunathan, Akhila Ramnarayan and Aarabi Veeraraghavan, performing six roles. The monologues, which are successful English, volition segue into the adjacent character, interspersed with unrecorded vocals by Srividya Vadlamani.
When Gowri started penning the play, she says, she realised the women successful The Ramayana are rather contemporary. “They unrecorded among us. They spell done the nitty-gritty of life’s experiences, the blood, sweat and tears each pistillate undergoes. They look sex discrimination, betrayals and injustice. I wanted to represent these women done this lens,” she says.
A inactive from the play What She Said. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement
Gowri has chosen women from 3 antithetic kingdoms. “There is the Kishkindha kingdom, the Ayodhya-Kosala kingdom and the Ravana kingdom. From there, it became a gendered communicative astir women belonging to antithetic societal strata.”
Even though What She Said was performed erstwhile successful Bengaluru for a tiny audience, this time, it is being staged connected a bigger scale. After premiering successful 2019, successful Chennai, the pandemic forestalled the play’s performances successful different cities, which the playwright present wants to rectify.
Gowri believes determination is large vantage successful utilizing mythology to speech astir modern times. “Everybody knows the story, truthful we don’t person to commencement from the beginning. Always perceived arsenic an idealistic straightforward narrative, The Ramayana can present beryllium presented to audiences with its galore complexities and ambiguities.”
How does 1 make an full monologue astir Shanta, the lesser-known girl of Dasharatha and Rama’s elder sister? Gowri says that is the amusive part. “Shanta was fixed distant successful adoption due to the fact that Dasharatha wanted a son. Her adoptive begetter aboriginal joined her disconnected to a sage. Since I didn’t person a batch of accusation astir her, it gave maine a accidental to beryllium creative.”
What She Said volition beryllium staged connected March 8, astatine Bangalore International Centre astatine 7pm. RSVP connected the website.
