A 140-year-old play about how social morality was used to oppress women in Norway in the 1880s finds a new audience in Mumbai with Ila Arun’s teleplay adaptation
The teleplay Peecha Karti Parchhaiyan brings the theatre experience to your living room
Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts was written to highlight how social morality was used to oppress women in Norway in the 1880s, but it may as well be a story about women in India today. That’s the point that Peechha Karti Parchhaiyaan, a teleplay adapted from Ibsen’s classic, drives home. The adaptation has been written by the multi-talented Ila Arun, who is also starring in the teleplay.
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Arun, who hails from Rajasthan, is renowned for her theatre chops and was exposed to Ibsen’s feminism in the play, The Lady By The Sea, which was inspired by the ballad Agnete og Havmanden, the story of a woman who falls in love with a merman and leaves everything behind to join him in the sea.
Ghosts, on the other hand, is commentary on how the combination of the royalty and church in 1800s’ Norway created the patriarchal gender norms that kept women subjugated. “Ibsen always had a unique way of looking at a woman; his insight into how a woman might feel, react to her life is exceptional. Which is why when I read Ghosts, I felt I knew this world. It was about how women often get caught in the prison of traditions,” says Arun.
Ila Arun
Arun’s play, about Rajasthani royalty, depicts a similar world in which women have historically had a tough time negotiating any elbow room. “My character, maharani Yashodhara bai comes from a world where parampara, and the bediya (chains) it creates for a woman of her stature in today’s socio-economical conditions, is still a challenge,” says Arun.
“It’s a bit sad, isn’t it? To realise that Ibsen’s observation on the condition of being a woman is just as relevant—if not more—today. I just loved that I could take this tale as old as time and make it relevant to what we here in India go through,” she adds. The teleplay is being staged by Arun’s group, Surnai Theatre and Folk Arts Foundation, started in partnership with veteran artiste KK Raina. The earlier theatrical production of Peechha Karti Parchhaiyaan had been directed by Raina, but this time round, he is focused solely on his role as a Rajpurohit, the advisor to the maharani.
Raina plays the physical embodiment of the “bediya” Arun speaks of. “He [the Rajpurohit] was then equal to the prime minister of today. He had immense power over the social, political and religious facets of society. It is interesting to play this character because his destructive force drives the story. Like they say, there is no Ram without Ravan,” says Raina.
Asked about the change of format to a teleplay, he says that the group agreed to it after the assurance that the play would remain untouched. “The only difference is that instead of people watching it live, it is recorded by cameras that are, of course, placed in different angles, according to the scene,” Raina explains.
Arun adds, “When you move from a play to a teleplay, you reach a wide audience, including women who might not have had the time or the reach to come to the theatre and watch a play that is ironically about their lives.” You can watch Peechha Karti Parchhaiyaan on August 25 at 2 pm and 8 pm on the Tata Play Theatre.
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