By Samhita Barooah
I got a message from Mary Therese Kurkalang about the play ‘Foreign body’ by Imogen Butler- Cole. She said she would be speaking after the play. My first response was that the tickets were too expensive for us to afford the seats in the front rows. Minimum rates were Rs 500 and the rest were higher than that. I tried my luck and found friends Alpana and Diganta who could arrange for the tickets, free of cost and we managed to go for it. As we entered the auditorium, I could see unique props on stage. A wooden chair and seven mirrors facing the chair with spotlights placed on the floor. As soon as the anchor – famous Assamese actor, Kapil Bora introduced the play and left the stage to the artist, I saw Imogen walking into the stage towards the chair. She picked up the chair and started making subtle and soft movements along with the chair. Imogen and the chair were inseparable for a large part of the play. It was a solo act with vigorous body movements and a stage setting meant for a psychotherapy session.
Recently I had watched an Estonian film on psychotherapy where the therapist used the ‘Talk to the Chair,’ concept very skillfully. I could relate to the same approach in this play where the chair was used at the centre of the stage and the actor moved from one mirror to the other with very swift and steady movements depicting the stories of the voices who spoke through the mirrors. It was almost like the mirrors came alive and the stories of the actor and those of the voices merged through the mirror reflections and created a ripple which connected each story with one element of ‘Sexual Assault’. Imogene’s analogies of the chair and the body movements around it left the audience spell bound. I could see the audience gripped into the act and even the slight cough or sigh seemed to have disturbed people around me. Some people were also trying to figure out what was happening with soft whispers about the mirrors. The mirror frames were either black or white and they had different heights which depicted the personalities of the background voices. Black and white frames could depict the colours of the survivors of sexual assault or they could depict the colour of the perpetrators as well. It was left to audience for interpretations.
Imogen shared the seven testimonies of the survivors, confession of some of the perpetrators and the healing process which a person goes through pre-post and during any form of sexual assault within or outside homes. All the testimonies were in English. Some striking features were more than real to move the audience to reflect deeply into the issues of sexual assault. After the show for 90 minutes a panel discussion was opened up for the audience to listen and participate. Two prominent activists, Mary Therese Kurkalang from Khublei, Delhi and Banamallika Choudhury from NEthing in Assam spoke about their struggles and engagement with addressing the context of sexual assault in Guwahati particularly and also in the region at large. Mary focused on her own #me too testimony, healing and finding survivor collectives to resist such crimes and Banamallika spoke about nuances within our context of facing and understanding sexual assault, younger women’s resistance and support services available in the city. Then the panel opened up the discussion towards the audience to find some intriguing responses filled with admiration, hope and anguish about the realities of sexual assault.
I kept thinking what if some of the members of the audience could actually walk up to the stage and stood in front of each mirror and completed the performance. That would have been a perfect finale to the #me too campaign which was the soul of this performance. My mind was stuck to the setting of the play and I kept thinking how to contextualise it in the 8 north eastern states. I wondered what if the testimonies were of perpetrators alone with their names, designations and social positions instead of the survivors and also if the play was done in local language. Even local props with a tinge of North East crafts other than mirrors and chair could be used. I kept thinking whether sexual assault was a topic to make the audience open up in this part of the country like #me too when professionals, families and legal proceedings were bound to maintain confidentiality during pending cases. In fact many realities kept propping up amongst the members of the audience. But it was an interesting presentation which was more of a mirrored reflection rather than an entertainment gimmick. It was really encouraging to see a matured audience with active participation and patient viewing.