From Venture Darling
| Photograph Credit score: Particular Association
Sharanya Ramprakash’s Venture Darling is an incisive examine of feminine sexuality on the crossroads of censorship and tradition in India. Offered by actor and director Prakash Raj, it was lately staged at Adishakti and Indianostrum Theatre in Puducherry.
The play, supported by the India Basis for the Arts (IFA), introduced alive on stage some bitter, uncomfortable social realities about feminine sexuality which can be deeply rooted in our society. However, the format allowed for humour and punchlines amid on a regular basis life and social engagements.
The play is a powerful social commentary
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Particular Association
Based mostly on the stage lifetime of veteran Kannada theatre actress Khanavali Chenni, who dominated the Kannada stage within the Nineteen Seventies together with her rib-tickling dialogues and sexual innuendo, the play traces the journey of a bunch of performers that set out on a seek for Chenni.
Whereas looking for her, they come upon a number of different actresses who’ve their very own tales to share. The seriousness of the play was appropriately balanced with some slapstick dialogues and daring questions pertaining to the societal angle in the direction of female and male sexuality.
“Why can’t there be a coaching programme for marriage and intercourse?” “Why is a lady referred to as a slut when she removes her high, however when a person does the identical, he’s revered as macho.” These traces that uncovered society’s gender hypocrisy labored wonders in getting throughout the soul of the play.
Into the ladies’s world.
| Photograph Credit score:
Particular Association
“Ladies and feminine our bodies have been central to Kannada’s cultural creativeness, from Igappa Hegede’s Vivaha Prahasana (1897) to Girish Karnad’s Nagamandala (1990). Theatre makes use of feminine sexuality to outline cultural company. Nonetheless, Kannada theatre’s precise relationship with ladies as performers has been fraught with nervousness,” says Sharanya Ramprakash, including: “I need to deconstruct the conventions of dramatic theatre to create considerably extra truthful expressions of our lived realities as actresses and ladies.”
Venture Darling can be a analysis of types into the “bawdy” ladies or “sexual” clowns from the Kannada nataka style. It additionally not directly highlights the established order of ladies within the Indian leisure trade, the place they’re objectified and appeared down upon. It additionally brings again reminiscences of late artistes equivalent to Gulab Bai, nautanki performer from Agra, Jaddanbai (mom of actor Nargis) of the Hindi movie trade and Silk Smitha of Tamil cinema, and the way they’re nonetheless handled as intercourse objects.
With the assistance of her eclectic stagecraft and a terrific ensemble of actors, Sharanya deftly offered the complexities of conventional and modern theatre, vis-a-vis society. Within the play, the right feminine character (as outlined within the Natyasastra) is created on stage. And, she is loaded with the huge weight of cultural baggage! When an actor questions on consent, one other retorts, “What consent? Now we have tradition”.
The director efficiently balanced severe documentary sources with hilarious and good theatricality — which the viewers loved.
The scenography and stagecraft had been progressive. Props equivalent to cameras, pictures, a typewriter, a whiteboard, screens, puppets and masks and a chair did justice to the script. The musical rating included the apt Recreation of Love and Kiss Me Tight. The good crew of actors included Shrunga BV (final seen in Mansore’s searing movie 19.20.21), Surabhi Vashist, Shobana Kumari, Shashank Rajshekar and Matangi Prasan.
