Days after he was molested at the Guwahati airport and no action taken despite a report filed, in his dejection, a thought crossed Deshik Vasandia's mind that perhaps it was his voguish tee, fitting jeans and pumping confidence which had got him noticed by the abuser. Appalled by his own line of thinking, the theatre actor also realised that women who have dealt with sex abuse are often made to / or arrive at the same thought. So the 34-year-old actor, monikered by theatrewallahs as 'that Shakespearean actor' for his expertise in William Shakespeare's brand of theatrics, turned to the man he knew best – William Shakespeare, to mess up gender roles set in stone by patriarchy.
Vansadia chose 'The Taming of the Shrew' – one of Shakespeare's highly controversial plays classified by many as misogynistic – where Petruchio plays dirty mind games with his wife, the outspoken Katherine, and succeeds in 'taming' her (the shrew). Vansadia decided to add his own twist to the tale. He did what was common practice of the Elizabethan era – and put the male actors in voluminous gowns with fitting bodices and puffed sleeves. Then, to shuffle the gender roles even further, he put the female actors in dapper doublets over puffy shorts and boots.
"I think the play mirrors the times," says Vansadia, who himself took on the role of the shrew, Katherine. "I had flashes of every person who tried to put me down. Things that my teacher, an older cousin, brother-in-law had said to me... and I connected deeply to this one particular dialogue in the play: 'A woman maybe made a fool if she doesn't have the spirit to resist'."
Vansadia hasn't bothered with wigs or female mannerisms to camouflage his gender. Even the stage décor resembles the no-frills Globe Theatre in London with two door frames as the only props. "The focus is not how well a man portrays the woman, but how well a man plays his part," he explains.
The female actors were jubilant to play men and even found it liberating to trash talk women and make sexual jokes. "Without being instructed, we ended up centering our weight and the way we moved like a man," says Swati Das, who plays the role of Katherine's husband, Petruchio. "This story must be seen in the context of its time, where women were pressurised into being timid and obedient, and men had to prove themselves all the time," she adds. As she reread the script, new facets to Petruchio's character emerged. "My reactions to him being aggressive fell flat when I discovered he's unconventional like Katherine and constantly questioning societal norms."
Quite a few instances, where these role reversals were jarring for the actors, did creep up. A scene where Tranio makes fun of his friend Hortensio, who is to marry a widow, has the lines "'Oh he will have a lusty widow for himself. He'll woo her and wed her in a day'. But 'wedding' her, actually implies 'bedding' her. The female actor found it very difficult to speak these lines in a lusty, disrespectful way. The male actor playing the widow was bummed out that 'she' doesn't even have a name in the play," explains Vasandia.
Playing Katherine also required modifying his mindset because "confrontation for a man means a loud voice and aggressive body language, but a woman fights through her wit, tongue and sharp intelligence." What shook Vansadia up the most was Katherine's arranged marriage in which he had no say. "It's a heartbreaking, powerless and awful place to be in."
With 'The Taming of the Shrew', Vansadia wanted the same anger that petered out from the staff of All India Radio, where they enacted the Bard's 'Measure for Measure', a scandalous script about a saint who asks a nun to sleep with him. And it was just that. At the preview last week, many found the play sexist and misogynistic. One girl was repulsed as it reminded her of the times her own mother was subjected to wife beating in a bid to 'tame' her. "But the monologue by Katherine in the end sets everything right as it looks like even the men didn't win."
'The Taming of the Shrew' will stage on May 8 at Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai
Voiced in Shakespearean English with a cast of 12 actors, the play will next travel to Baroda, Delhi and Bengaluru.
