Orgasm Revisited

By Naila Grewal

PR

On the 9th of March 1973, Franca Rame was pushed into the back of a van by a group of five men. Raped and tortured. After deserting her in a lone park, she walked - how long, she couldn’t remember - until she found herself in front of the central police station. Leaning against the building across the road, she began to frame the type of questions that would be asked of her. ‘I’ll report them tomorrow,’ she decided.

The four monologues presented bySaanjhaSapnaain a piece titled, ‘Orgasm’ at Delhi’s Alliance Francaise yesterday, explored the theatrical works and experiences of Franca Rame and her playwright husband, Dario Fo.KanchanUjjal, the director of this play, recreated four of Rame and Fo’s most well written monologues, which dealt with the representation of women in society and various forms of oppression that women have to face regardless of age or circumstances.

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The play began with the monologue, ‘Waking Up’, performed by PriyankaLulla, which depicted the domestic scenario of a young, working woman who gets so carried away by her duties of being a new mother (ironing clothes, cleaning the house, feeding her baby) that by the end of the piece, scurries out to the front door, completely forgetting of it being a Sunday (a non-working day). While during the initially course of the monologue, Priyanka’s representation of the character didn’t appear as naturalistic, by the second half of the piece, her intentions became more apparent, and so did the message of loss of female identity surface.

The second monologue, ‘A Woman Alone’, showed the protagonist, Maria (played by Sonali Sharma), in her front room. Maria gets chatting to her neighbour through the window and her life slowly unravels in front of the audience. Locked up in her house by her invidious husband, she has a baby and a brother in law - head to foot in a plaster cast, only able to move one (groping) hand - to look after, and is pestered by a desperate lover. This piece can almost be considered a tribute to the ability women have to multi-task. The way Sonali plays out the character makes it evident that the monologue is also a sharply observed mockery about how they cope in the face of controlling men. But more than anything Fo and Rama’s script is crafted such that it makes us laugh even in the gravest moments.

‘We All Have The Same Story’, a powerful monologue by Debontika Das, explored the journey of a teenage girl who gets pregnant with her boyfriend’s baby. The play deals with the fact that many so-called progressive men are just as sexist as other men, are just as fascinated in using a woman's body for their own pleasure, and are just as condescending of what that woman wants. Also, through a story the woman tells her baby girl, the absurdity and sexism of traditional "fairy tales" and the general notion that a man could be a liberatoror a "prince charming" for any woman, is mocked, ridiculed and challenged.The relevance of this particular piece made it interesting and allowed the audience to reinterpret the pre-existing notions of sexuality and sexism in our society today.

Contextualizing all the three monologues, the fourth monologue, performed by the director of the play, KanchanUjjal, dealt with Rame’s horrific experience. ‘The Rape’, unfolded by giving the audience a detailed account of what ensued with Rame for those 30 minutes on the 9th of March, 1973. An intimate, heartrending monologue, the audience couldn’t help but feel completely consumed by the end of the piece, especially with the last dialogue, “Did you have an orgasm?”. While the piece once again made us question the treatment of women in society and the insensitivity with which we deal with rape victims, the monologue could have been presented in a more imaginative and indirect fashion, rather than the literal, screamy monologue it turned out to be.

The play in its entirety was engaging, involving and left the audience with many questions to delve upon. While essentially the play was dealing with some serious issues, we were constantly lightened by the moments of comic relief scattered throughout the play. “The play required its actors to understand and present the fine blend of comedy and dark theatre,” says Debontika.

While the monologues were dealing withfemale oppression, the title of the play, ‘Orgasm’, seemed somewhere out of place. Upon speaking with the director she explained, “Colloquially ‘orgasm’ refers to sexual excitement, however, the dictionary meaning of ‘orgasm’ is tiny little deaths. All the monologues involved the actors experiencing some form of death.”

Nowadays Delhi is experiencing a wave of unconventional, experimental theatre, which is making audiences question the world they are living in. ‘Orgasm’ served to do exactly that. Plays like ‘Orgasm’ are allowing people to realize that words like “sex” and “rape” are not taboo. Also recently performed at the India Habitat Centre was, ‘The Vagina Monologues’, which was very well received, that goes to suggest that Indian audiences are ready for a paradigm shift in the world of theatre. In the wake of numerous rape incidents in India, we need more plays like this so that people understand that there is no stigma related to issues like sex, but rather, are concepts that need to be analyzed and interpreted from the female perspective as much as the male.