20 December: YOU MUST STOP.

Galleria Market, Gurgaon
Two sets of 'being stopped' action exercises
Performers: Amu, Niranjani, Keshav, Pali, Shena
Documenter (Photos & Video): Tarun
Audience No.: 20 to 50 each time

 

We wanted to make a comment on the recent rape case in Delhi. We decided to do an exercise in which a person is repeatedly stopped from doing a simple action. Much talk had been flying around – in the media and even in our own homes - about how girls/women need to stop going out in the evenings, stop working late, stop wearing ‘western’ clothes, stop travelling by bus, stop…

We thought it may just be a little abstract, but didn’t want to do an overt re-playing of the story or anything that resembled a sloganeering street-play. It didn’t prove to be abstract at all. Audiences immediately related what they witnessed to recent events. One gentleman said, “there’s nothing left to be said, you’ve said it all.”

 
We did the exercise twice. The first time we had two scenarios going on simultaneously. One in which Shena simply wanted to move from point A to point B, but was stopped by Keshav, the other in which Niranjani and Pali wanted to touch hands, but were stopped from doing so by Amu. For the actors, internally, as a theatre exercise the experience was powerful and real – somewhat surprising all of us. Aggression, power, avoidance, anger, cowering, hopelessness, fear, need, animalism, violence. 

For the audience, there is no doubt that the intensity and nature of the performance touched and resonated with people. We were repeatedly thanked for what we had done, and were able to speak with a number of people – almost each and every one of them ‘getting’ what we were trying to say and happy to engage in conversation. 

The second time we did the exercise we chose to have three ‘stoppers’ – Niranjani, Pali and Shena – and two ‘stopees’ – as it made sense to have a larger number of stoppers, as the dominant voice. Simple story of Amu and Keshav trying to connect, and being stopped from doing so. Anger and violence bred in those being stopped, while the stoppers found the power and ‘smugness’ of their higher status. At one point, one brave man sipping coffee in a CCD saw the performance through the café window and charged out to stop the violence, thinking that it was real. Nice to know that there are people out there capable of heroism, and not afraid to put themselves out on a limb for a stranger in trouble. Before he smashed Keshav’s face in though, Pali and Niranjani were able to let him know it’s an ‘improv’ exercise – thereby saving Keshav’s life (according to Keshav!).

keshav almost gets his face bashed in...

 Again there was a crowd of people who wanted to talk about what they had seen afterwards. 

This is a Do that is replicable and that resonates with audiences well. However, we are not sure that we need to or want to visit such intense emotional spaces as actors each time. There may be a way of stylizing it, or of containing it in some way – while still keeping it real. However, there is definitely something here that we can build on. (Perhaps without the shaking-like-a-leaf afterwards effect?!)