Street Theater Can Open Men’s Eyes to Women’s Harassment

Women across region, class and age have always expressed a serious concern for their physical safety. Take the capital city of Delhi, for instance: It has regularly faced indictment for failing to provide safety to its women residents; a 2012 survey by the UN and the International Center for Research on Women showed that 95% of women felt unsafe in Delhi, and 51% of men interviewed there admitted to having sexually harassed women in public places.

Therefore, in an effort to examine the access – the lack thereof, and the challenges therein — to public spaces by women in the city, The Pocket Company launched Genderventions (directed by Niranjani Iyer), a theater project, of which I was a part. Through a series of street performances in different areas of Delhi, we set out to assess how comfortable and confident Delhi’s women felt outside their homes, and what men viewed as harassment, its causes and the possible solutions.

Here’s how the project rolled out and what we found.

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It started with a workshop, during which women members of the Genderventions team re-enacted scenes of harassment, the ludicrous suggestions — like “do not go anywhere alone” – that they and women at large are routinely given by society as solutions to women’s safety, and possible ways of resistance against these expectations.

For example, thinking about how women deal with the lack of public toilets, a high-stress scene, led to a skit in which one woman acted out peeing, while two covered her, and another stood guard.

As one of the activities in the workshop, women from the Genderventions team went to a park on a winter night. When men huddled around a bonfire saw them, the men asked why the women were out at night. Upon explaining that they were trying to reclaim public spaces at night, the men seemed to realize that the spaces they take for granted are daily battlefields for women.

During the workshop, too, women spent time learning the expected postures of a male body. This led to an exercise in which the Genderventions women occupied public spaces while assuming postures commonly associated with men. I participated in this, visiting a Delhi tea stall – the only woman there. I remember sitting with my feet up, or standing in the middle of the road with arms behind my head, while bystanders stared with a mixture of shock, awe, or, if they were women, of amusement and admiration.

In the same exercise, Gendervention’s male members tried to walk and carry their bodies like women. We took this exercise to the male members of the audience and gave them instructions usually given to girls about how to sit, stand, walk, laugh — be graceful; don’t be too fast; don’t walk so slowly that you seem dull; smile, don’t look morose; don’t laugh loudly; don’t put your chest out. This sought to help the men watching understand the undue pressure upon women’s bodies to simultaneously embody the obligation to be nice, and the fear of coming across as too nice. The men’s awkwardness was clear; they said they did not feel “natural” or at ease, and did not like being constantly instructed.

We found this to be effective experience-sharing, where the audience could empathize through having lived the same experience, albeit temporarily.

The project was taken to different areas, markets and street corners of Delhi and depicted the scenes of harassment developed in the workshop, and asked the audience to describe what they perceived. If they said the woman was being harassed, we asked why they thought so. They described how the woman was squirming and inching close to the corner of her bus seat, or scowling in anger if the man’s hand touched her knees.

We also depicted a scene in which a female actor started alone on stage, then male actors joined her. It allowed the audience to observe a woman’s body in a space free of men, and then observe how discomfort in her body started building up as more and more men’s eyes turned to stare at her. This was to shed light on how staring can constitute harassment for a woman.

Ultimately, men easily outnumbered women in the audience, because as an unwritten rule, women are not supposed to loiter and watch street performances. At one point, we even had to pause the performance and intervene because a young girl was not able to watch our play due to being constantly jostled by men. The only exception was when we performed in a team member’s residential area; there, women formed the larger piece of the audience pie because she had personally invited the women. 

After our shows, women in the audience spoke of how the only place where they felt comfortable in their bodies was the bathroom. 

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When it comes to providing security to women, the focus of the government is still on CCTV cameras, SOS apps and helpline numbers, whose aim is either to help women stay safe or to provide mechanisms to report if they are harassed. It is still far away from proactively creating spaces that are welcoming for women, and encouraging women’s right to risk. It is still a time where irritated cops ask women to avoid trouble and go home when these women come together for their night walks to reclaim the streets.

Sometimes we do not believe in solutions or alternatives until we see them; art can help with the visualization. The performances and interactions we engaged in show that, despite laws, men’s take on harassment came a lot from what they, and not the women, “believed” should be defined as harassment. Victim-blaming is still rampant.

In our “ideal city” exercise, we asked men and women to describe a city that is equally accessible and comfortable for men and women. When our female actor gave an example by sitting on an imagined bus seat, with closed eyes and a relaxed body, taking up enough space for herself, some protested that it was not the correct or proper way to sit.

Once, a member of the audience said a harassed woman on the bus should stand up on her seat and call attention to the harasser. After a team member carried out the suggestion and enacted that scene, I realized I had never considered the possibility — but after I had seen it “in action,” I felt I was ready to literally stand my ground the next time somebody tried to attack me. Ironically, but not unexpectedly, I had to confront a harasser on public transport even as I was on my way to one of these performances.

Delhi is home to women from diverse backgrounds. Some come seeking education and employment. Others have lived there all their lives. Both look to the capital with the hope that it would provide them with opportunities they do not have access to elsewhere. These women deserve better. They deserve more interventions by the state and its citizenry, more gender-ventions that change attitudes and actually prevent crimes against them, so they can equally and fearlessly claim every inch of the mega-city. 

First published in The Swaddle, 7 Jun 2019.

Don’t make a mountain out of menstruation

Using theatre to talk of taboo subjects in the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, and the lessons learnt

A few years ago, our theatre troupe, Aatish, had gone to the Central Himalayan region of Uttarakhand, in the Almora region, with our plays on resisting menstrual taboos and pre- and post-natal care for women. Before we booked our tickets, there was a big debate in our team on whether the men in our troupe should go along with us. Would it make it awkward for the women in the audience to interact with us if there were men on the stage too? Would they even come to watch?

We finally decided that patriarchal rules were set up by men and at times implemented by women. So both men and women needed to be part of the discussion. If a man wondered about why his menstruating daughter is not sleeping in a hut outside, he needed to know that it was her right to be as safe and comfortable as the rest of her family. If medicines or nutritious food had to be bought for pregnant or lactating mothers, men needed to know why it was crucial to budget for it.

With some of our apprehensions and nervousness still remaining, we got on the stage on performance day. With our usual enthusiasm, glitches and improvisation, we concluded our plays and waited with bated breath for the audience’s response. The turnout had been promising. But we still bit our nails fretting: would the audience find it worthwhile to come for our upcoming performances in the area or would they reject our choice of subject and actors for discussing what many consider “womanly” issues, or, “ladies problems”!?

After a kind applause, an old woman got up to say, “All right, we need to maintain hygiene during menstruation. But living here in the mountains we face water scarcity. Can something be done about that?” Another man her age shared how his pregnant daughter-in-law was forced to carry water as her spouse worked in the city and the father-in-law was too old to do it himself. We encountered more openness in talking about women’s health than we sometimes find in urban settings.

A local activist spoke of how women need to be healthy in order to function well in society, drawing the analogy of a sewing machine that needs regular oiling. We interjected to say that women need to be healthy because everyone deserves to be, and not just because good health ensures women’s productivity, something that ends up serving others’ interests more than their own. Two girls came to talk to us in private. One tried to explain a menstrual problem but was not very clear. Her friend, standing a few steps behind, came forward and revealed that her friend had been speaking on her behalf, because the girl had been hesitant. She then spoke about the issue herself and asked us if she should see a doctor.

Others in the audience said that the hospital in front of which we performed hardly had doctors or medicines. Someone from the hospital said that is because people do not come to the health centre but prefer to go to ojhas instead. There was a dialogue. We ended up doing a workshop for the NGO that wanted to create a play on basic health issues to show how people could take care of minor ailments (many children in the region had been lost to diarrhoea) through simple measures at home rather than going to quacks and risking their health. There was also demand for a dance performance after all the serious stuff we had put them through! Slightly embarrassed at our lack of skill in the area, we had to excuse ourselves. In the evening, we performed our play on menstruation again on a stage that had been set for a Ramleela performance by the locals. As we tried to break a taboo in our own small way, little heads of Ramayana characters peeped from behind the wings.

Some of the questions that had been raised by the villagers were simpler to answer than the others. The people there probably already knew that. But they wanted someone to listen, which we did. And we learnt and unlearnt. We learnt a bit more about the lives of people in the mountains, and unlearnt some of our own stereotypes. We realised that for all of our efforts to spread “awareness”, we too had not used words like “menstruation”, or “maahvaari”, its Hindi equivalent, as many times in our lives as we did that day on stage. We witnessed that once we had normalised the use of those words, a girl in the audience could also use it to discuss her problem with us. We lived the experience of every effort of liberation being a collective one, not something that gets passed down from one to the other. We saw that the restraint that an urban sense of privacy imposes on middle class or upper middle class conversations is often absent from many rural conversations where privacy and segregated familial and individual spaces are often a luxury. We noted that working at the local level required an understanding of the local context, and not stand-alone, externally imposed “solutions”. We were humbled to see that where fundamental rights could not be availed of, people at times withered, and at others made do with proud resilience. We observed that when representatives in a democracy failed to serve their people, those people sometimes got attached to dangerous peddlers of faith, for the desperate want of something to hold on to in the face of adversity. And we learnt that if we wanted more people to join our revolution, we needed to add some dance to it!

Walking back to our accommodation after the performances, workshops and discussions, we saw a grey-haired lady beat us to the top as we huffed and puffed up the treacherous hilly path. We knew that she and her tribe could leave us behind each time, and we thought of the “development” that had been too slow in reaching them, and yet was ironically leaving them behind.

First published in  thREAD, The Hindu, 4 Apr 2019.

How theatre in Delhi has been finding and creating stages beyond Mandi House

A theatre is not a blank page for editorial, it is not a soapbox or a Tannoy system: it is a conscience that wakes with what is happening in the space, and wakes further still in response to what people are making of it.

-Andrew O'Hagan

When I joined the Hindi dramatic society of my college in Delhi University in 2003, it was the mention of the National School of Drama (NSD) that used to get us all starry eyed. To give us a flavour of the city's theatre, our seniors took us to Mandi House for a show of Premchand's Rangbhoomi. We sat enraptured as we watched professional actors play out the subtleties and complexities of each character, and of a bygone era. It still remains one of the most memorable performances I have witnessed.

Therefore it was only natural that when those interested in theatre walked out of their colleges, NSD was one of their top priorities. Of course with few seats and state-wise allocations, not everyone could join. Some people trained at other places in and outside India and brought to Delhi their experiences of physical theatre, theatre with dance, theatre as therapy, theatre with communities, children, theatre as clowns . . . As these specialisations developed, the theatre circuit in Mandi House expanded to make way for a larger, more organically shaping theatre scene in different parts of the city.

In Shadipur, Studio Safdar has a small rehearsal-performance space and also a book cafe, which hosts readings, talks, music sessions. Groups have been hosting intense performances in small cafes. There are "alternate theatre" groups like Third Space Collective that have been successfully staging their shows on bigger stages like Epicentre, Gurgaon. The group I was associated with, Aatish, and the project I was part of, Genderventions (by The Pocket Company, directed by Niranjani Iyer), transform atypical spaces like parks, gullies and bus stands for interactive theatre on ongoing social issues. And then there is solo theatre by people like Maya Rao and Mallika Taneja deeply invested in issues like gender justice, power packed deliveries that have broken the myth of such performances being navel-gazing exercises involving dull monologues. Mohalla Festivals organised by the Lost & Found Trust hosted performances in residential colonies, supported by the resident welfare associations and the inhabitants of the locality. Trees people jogged beneath in parks were used to prop halogens.

Almost all these groups are travelling troupes, performing outside Delhi and, at times, outside India too. Apart from NSD, there are theatre courses in Sri Ram Centre and in newly emerging institutions like Shiv Nadar University and Ambedkar University. Courses are being designed keeping in mind people in other professions so that they do not have to thwart their love for theatre because of being in full time jobs. At the same time, schools have opened up to teaching theatre and theatre practitioners are being appointed by them. Theatre Professionals, Mumbai, is a group that has been identifying such artists in Delhi and placing them with schools here. Kingdom of Dreams in Gurgaon is seen as many as an elitist, commercialised theatre space while other actors feel the pay they get there allows them to do other, more "soulful" theatre. Slam Out Loud, an arts group I worked with, is pushing the envelope further and taking theatre to children in government schools.

This varied mix of theatre groups, spaces and methods has been a welcome development in Delhi where theatre enthusiasts do not have to settle for a narrow definition of theatre but can choose to get involved in the kind of theatre that relates best to their individual interest and ideology.

First published in DailyO, 10 Nov 2018.

Life as we knew it: How my three years in college shaped me into the person I am

I had around 74.6 per cent marks when I came to Delhi in 2003 to apply for college courses. 75 per cent was the cut-off at most places to even take the test (yes, I sure am glad I finished school as long back as I did and escaped the current day rat race young people get forced into). When in the sixth grade, I had been told there was a course where all you had to do was read novels. I had waited for years before I could get rid of maths and science in class 11 to opt for humanities. After that, I had been waiting to come to college and woo English Literature with single-minded devotion. I had secretly resolved to study literature through correspondence instead of choosing a subject I 'did not mind'.

As it turned out, I didn't have to go for a 'back up' option. Unlike in other colleges, the English department of Miranda House, Delhi University, allowed candidates to take their test if they had 65 per cent. When clearing the test got me both a college and a hostel seat there, I could tell that this was going to be a relationship where we understood each other.

I didn't find popular stereotypes about big city institutions to be true — either in the college or in the hostel — where your clothes or your accent were more important than what you did. And there was so much to do, apart from classes you didn't want to miss: Super(hyper?)active societies, protests, festivals, inter-college presentations, sports . . . everything laced with the camaraderie of brilliant women (peers, seniors, teachers and other staff members) who inspired and supported us. In my first few months in college, when someone asked me if I felt homesick, I realised I never got the time to. It was also my first time in a women’s only institution. But, if anything, I only felt more comfortable and confident here.

One of the most vibrant sites of this solidarity was my own department. There wasn't a better place to be. From the very beginning, we were taken seriously. So, I started taking myself seriously. We were called “ladies”, not girls. If we scored low on a test, there wasn't anger or scorn, there was concern. I remember one of my test papers where I hadn’t answered some questions and my teacher had written, “why”. I imagined her frown in worry over what I had done, and I wasn't wrong because that is what I witnessed when I met her to discuss the test. This one time I had missed a test, and when my teacher rescheduled it she said I was allowed to sit in an empty classroom and finish writing even without supervision because she trusted me enough not to cheat. I started doing more because my teachers believed I was capable of it. I spoke to my teachers about my problems and angst. We watched films together, in the college seminar room, in theatres, and their homes.

Some of us once bunked class for the heck of it, because it was one of those 'cool' things you had to check-off your list before you exited college. Later, we kept bugging other classmates to brief us about what had happened in those classes, hoping we hadn’t missed another discussion around Uppity Women of Medieval Times, or a heated debate on why there is no such thing as true love. But most importantly, we were pushed to think for ourselves, as one of our teachers said when advising us about our assignments, “If I want to know what the critic thinks, I’ll buy his book.”

Those years spoilt us because after we passed out we looked for similar spaces outside but couldn't find them. I cry each time I watch Mona Lisa Smile because the passion with which Julia Roberts keeps coming up with new interests and challenges for her students, going much beyond the syllabus and the classroom, makes me miss my own faculty. Because before college, we women were aware of gender discrimination. But our teachers gave us the tools to articulate that injustice, and the confidence to fight it.

Now when I go to college I walk with my stomach drawn in and my breath held. If I am taking a friend along and I point to a place where we used to rehearse or eat lunch, it leaves me feeling unsettled because I am not able to describe it properly. Because yes, that happened . . . but then, there was that too . . . and it came to mean that . . . and also something else . . . and how can I make someone else see all this or explain to them when they were not even there.

We carry our Miranda within us and if it won't have us back maybe we'll create some of our own. Something's gotta give.

First published in DailyO, 28 Oct 2018.