Date:06/09/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/09/06/stories/2008090661490200.htm

Tamil Nadu - Madurai

Students learn to take social issues to street

D. Karthikeyan

Touch upon various forms of oppression of the marginalised

MADURAI: In an effort to make students realise their social responsibilities and how they could engage an art form to transform the lives of the marginalised, the Department of Social Sciences of Lady Doak College organised a workshop in street theatre from August 30.

The four-day programme, organised in association with the United Board of Higher Education in Asia, tried out various ways to communicate social themes through theatre.

It ended on Tuesday with the debut performance of a theatre group, ‘Unarvugal’ (feelings or emotions).

The students were trained by Gandhi Mary, Professor of Tamil, Lycee Francais, Puducherry, who is involved in children’s theatre for two decades, and Zoe Sherinian, Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology School of Music, University of Oklahoma, United States, whose research interests include Dalit folk music as liberation theology.

Masks do the unmasking

The inaugural performance was a medley, touching many genres. Performers, wearing masks and trying to unmask the “real” faces, portrayed the overt and covert nature of patriarchal element, which affects the everyday lives of women. Through various characters they tried to show the different facets of oppression and its forms.

Child marriage and domestic violence were portrayed through short skits and play. Girl students played with ease Parai, once considered a symbol of pollution and now widely used as a tool of self-respect and assertion.

Kolattam was also performed to a song on domestic violence and slavery.

The marginal condition of Devadasi women within the stratified social system was well depicted through a short play that showed how her emotions and feelings were subjugated within the hegemonic social order.

The training was intended to help how the student as an artiste can balance his or her perspective with that of his subjects of representation and make them agents of social change.

The workshop was organised by Caroline Nesabai, Head, Department of Social Sciences, and Anita Tiphagne, lecturer.