The GUIDE caught up with the director of Sapphire Butterfly Blue, which deals with witch hunts in India

The GUIDE caught up with the director of Sapphire Butterfly Blue, which deals with witch hunts in India

There's going to be stage lights and lots of action at High Spirits this Wednesday when Orchestrated Q'works (OQ) will stage a theatrical performance. The city-based theatre group works with individuals of all ages.u00a0

"We love working with surreal, supernatural, absurd and episodic themes", said Hina Siddiqui (23), director and producer of Sapphires Butterfly Blue. Siddiqui has her roots well entrenched in Pune having done her schooling and college education in the city.u00a0 OQ was set up 3.5 years ago and they have done a total of 10 plays so far, most of which can be classified as "experimental English theatre". Hina's interest in drama started while she was studying in Wadia College where she got involved in plays.

She is very excited about her upcoming play, which was originally the story of the Salem witch trials that occurred in colonial America in 1692. The play contained excerpts from the actual transcripts of the trials and correspondence between the accused, their relatives and the judges.

(Above and on top) The making of Sapphire Butterfly Blue

"Since 1986, the year I was born, nearly 3,000 women have been killed in India's so-called witch hunts. It seems absurd that something that happened more than three centuries ago in the west, still repeats itself with brutal regularity in India till this very day," explains Hina about why she chose to stage this play. Just like the witch hunts at Salem, today's hunts are also based on frivolous spectral evidence, paranoid populations and misogynistic mindsets. "Even today we call women demeaning names such as dayan and they are beaten up, paraded naked with their heads shaved. Thus, the play explores the psyche of a dark period of American history and also throws light on the darkness of India's superstitions," explains Siddiqui.

The play has integrated both the Indian and the western connection. So, while the story is about the Salem witch trials, the visuals and audio are connected to what happens in India. But the play has no regular plot and being an epic play, it unfolds in an episodic manner.

"We hope to spread awareness and are expecting a lot of youngsters to turn up. Our cast is also very young as the eldest is all of 17 and the cast are students from colleges and schools," he added.

At: High Spirits, Koregaon Park.
On: June 9, 9 pm

What is a witch hunt?
A witch hunt is the search for witches or evidence of witchcraft, which involves mass hysteria and lynching. Historically, there were several witch hunts and trials that were legally sanctioned. One of the most famous witch hunts was the Salem witch hunt, a series of hearings before local magistrates to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex counties of colonial Massachusetts, in the US between February 1692 and May 1693.

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