Taking the Pink Sari Revolution to stage

“What was really powerful was suddenly seeing thousands of women in pink marching across the world after Trump’s election, and knowing that actually there’s a movement in India, where women had been walking and fighting, many years beforehand, in the same way,” says a rather inspired Suba Das, the director of the play Pink Sari Revolution that is making its Indian debut in Mumbai.

Based on the book by the same name by journalist Amana Fontanella Khan, the play is a riveting tale of Uttar Pradesh’s pink sari uniformed and stick armed indigenous feminist vigilante group Gulabi Gang and its founder Sampat Pal Devi.

Suba, who is the Associate Director at the Curve Theatre, Leicester, England, worked three years with Purva Naresh, who has adapted the book for the stage, to come up with a production for the UK audience. “We started reading Amana’s book and kind of immediately struck by the theatricality and captivating image of a gang of women in a neon pink sari,” he reminisces the excitement. As a British national of Bengali origin, what furthered his interest was to shun the popular presentation of Indian women on stage or in Indian culture as victims. “What was really important for me was that the issues surrounding misogyny, violence against women, and patriarchy are the global issues and how this story has a universal resonance. And in the UK, it would really surprise people and challenge some of the pre-conceptions of what Indian femalehood can look like or be understood at culturally over there,” divulges Suba.

The play Pink Sari Revolution centres itself in following Amana’s journalistic account of Sampat and the gang trying to fight for the justice for a Dalit girl Sheela Nishad who was raped by an upper caste politician. “It had the whole story of Sampat diving into politics and the caste system, so Amana gave us that framework and it was kind of about using that one episode to weigh in the larger structure,” says Suba.

What helped Suba to stage such a culturally distanced narrative was the actual research that he and Purva had put in from visiting Sampat thrice to attending meetings with the key members and participating in protests among others. Ask Suba what Sampat is like and his answer is amusing. “Sampat is captivating because in a way she is a pop star. She is a woman who knows everything about image and idea. The way she stages her protests, she is a theatre-maker. She is charisma personified, and you can’t take your eyes from her when she is in the room,” he describes.

In contrast to the UK production, the Indian production of the play is much simpler and follows the storytelling with visual metaphors. In his time spent with Sampat, Suba was most fascinated with the way she along with her gang would march and reclaim the public places for women. Having inspired by that, he places seven storytellers on the stage throughout the show. They gradually begin to share stories about UP, river Chambal and then the stories of Sampat. “There is a kind of a storytelling mise-en-scene so that’s part of the staging language. What you are seeing on the stage is this troupe who create everything themselves including sounds. They are watching, witnessing, reacting and commenting on every scene. It’s kind of a community on the stage and it’s the idea of the gang, the democracy, and the strength in numbers.

Moreover, to suggest the instances of violence and misogyny, Suba spares his audience with actual depiction but presents metaphorical representation as he believes that art is all about suggestion. “You will be looking at the metaphorical imagery of violence. At one point the police officer just pours a bucket of blood down the drain, and the image of that is the very long uncomfortable pouring of a bucket of women’s blood and it tells you everything,” he reveals. Another very prominent image of violence comes in the depiction of a man thrashing a rag-doll representing his sister with stick, as a part of celebrating a misogynistic a sexist festival Gudiya.

—The play will be held tomorrow at NCPA