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Conflict Theatre in Your Village! |
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To the streets:
Sample Plays
1. What is your
name?
is a play about the
ways in which Dalits, or “untouchables”, themselves are made to
participate in their own suppression. In many places in Nepal,
Dalits are not allowed to enter teashops, people’s homes, temples,
etc. It is a peculiar type of racism, however, because it is not
always immediately apparent from a person’s appearance whether he
or she is Dalit or not. Outside of their own village, where
everybody knows their families, dalits often lie about their
background.
In this play, a
tailor (this is one of the “untouchable” occupational castes) has
gone to the bazaar for some work. In the first scene, a girl from
his village recognizes him, and reminds him he is late in sewing
her some new clothes. The audience now knows he is a dalit. The
next scene is in a teashop. We see a customer and the owner
discussing loosely about life. The customer throws out some
remarks how dalits are rumored to have entered this teashop
lately. The owner denies it - this would have meant that his shop
was “polluted.” The tailor then enters the shop, orders a cup of
tea and falls into conversation with the other customer. The owner
and the other customer do not know he is a dalit. The conversation
goes along nicely, until the other customer at one point asks the
dalit his family name. Answering honestly would reveal his caste
identity. The play stops here - the actors freeze with the
question hanging in the air. The animator enters the stage and
explains that the actors have become stuck. They don’t know what
they tailor should answer. Should he tell his name truthfully or
lie to prevent the conflict from being exposed?
Whatever the
audience answer, the story unfolds through their ideas. New
situations emerge, the actors freeze and the audience again how
the characters respond.
2. Chameli
is a play about the
exploitation of agricultural laborers, and in particular the
practice of laborers children working for the landlords in far
away bazaars and cities. This is quite common among former bonded
laborers in South-western Nepal. Landowners demand that laborers
send their children to work in city homes in return for the
parent's right to farm the land.
In the play, a
family of bonded laborers, or kamaiyas, has been left
landless and jobless after the government’s emancipation
declaration. The father goes to speak to the local Brahman
landowner. The landowner offers him half of the harvest of his a
certain field, on the condition that the laborer send his daughter
to work for him. The labor returns to tell his family. The mother
agrees, as they are desperate for food. However, on the to send
his daughter he meets another laborer who had farmed the field
last year. He accuses the father of using his daughter to "outbid"
him, and take his land from him. As they are about to fight, the
play stops. The animator asks the audience what the father should
do.
3. Father and Son
deals with the
reluctance of older generation of "untouchables" to challenge the
oppression they live with in their own lives. The play centers on
an older dalit man, whose son has returned from Kathmandu. The
son, whose name is Chetana, meaning awareness in Nepali, wants to
challenge the caste rules in the village that discriminate against
them. The father is afraid of the consequences. He feels his son
is not aware of the local situation anymore.
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"In peace
sons bury fathers, but war violates the order of nature, and
fathers bury sons
- Herodotus |
The play opens in a
village teashop. Due in part to a misunderstanding, in part to the
son's provocation of his father, the old man tries to leave
without cleaning his own cup, as is required of low castes. The
teashop owner strikes the old man. Seeing this the son intervenes
and soon the police are involved also. The father begs his son to
leave it be, but the son is enraged. The police arrest him and
carry him of. The father collapses crying in front of the owner.
The play freezes and the animator asks the audience asked, "What
should the old man do?"
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