When Ibsen’s Ghosts premiered in London in 1891, it was lambasted by critics and denounced by the London Daily Telegraph as, “An open drain…a dirty act done publicly…Absolutely loathsome and fetid…”
Yet as we speak, Ibsen’s work is enjoying a renaissance of relevance within the cultural conditions of Southern Asia. The plays explore issues of gender, corruption, hypocrisy, the economic suffering of women and social depravity. Think child-prostitution, organ trafficking and the sale of men, women and children into forced labour or sex industries. Ibsen’s plays speak loudly and clearly to exploitation and as third-world populations are plagued by such problems- his plays are having an impact.
Speakers at the recent Ibsen in South Asia Theatre Conference said that Ibsen’s works continue to be potent for their audiences. The conference was attended by actors and directors from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mauritius, Nepal and Syria. Talking about Ibsen, Salman Shahid an actor, said that most of Ibsen’s plays dealt with symbols or ‘totems’ which are identified and broken in the course of the drama: and many of these totems remain unchallenged in Asia.
One director noted that Nora’s gender-based revolt against her place in society in A Doll’s House is still vital viewing for Asian women today. So it seems that the ‘open drain’ of the 1900s is now highlighting the troubles of another people, on another continent, at quite another time. Ibsen would be pleased; and this is in fact the central miracle of the theatrical event. It can speak to us across time and distance – about the very essentials of life. As Elwood in The Blues Brothers famously quipped: “There are some things that just make us all the same.”
At the conference, performance group Tehreek-e-Niswan, led by Sheema Kirmani stated that: “…no less than four mothers die and seven are severely disabled across the country during the one and a half hour” show. Kirmani’s group have been touring plays on social issues across the country, including remote areas, since the 1980s. Other conference speakers agreed that theatre is a powerful medium with which to spread new ideas and potential solutions throughout their communities.
In another part of the world a woman actor plays to a crowded Beirut theatre and tells the audience that she was forced to shave her pubic hair. “My husband hates the hair. He thinks it’s filthy and disgusting…but when I stopped shaving it he had an affair with another woman…But you have to love the hair if you love ‘CoCo’,” she says, using an endearment for the vagina. There is applause and laughter from the many women in the audience. Women’s Talk, is one of two plays that have recently explored the Arabic taboo of tackling female sexuality. And the taboo rules most countries of the Middle East.
Inspired by Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, Lina Khoury’s play features four women talking about serious issues such as rape, domestic violence and sexual harassment. Discussing or reporting such events is a taboo in itself; so within 12 pithy monologues the play is able to explore topics that are associated with the most intimate women’s talk behind closed doors.
Khoury wrote and directed the monologues based on interviews with women of different ages. “The audience needs to know about these issues. I don’t know why it is shameful for a woman to talk openly about her period… We have to question the customs and traditions…that are oppressing us,” she adds. And despite Lebanon’s reputation for liberalism in the Middle East, Khoury had to soften the text to get the show past the censor’s eye, and waited for more than a year for permission to stage the production. Such is the power of theatre in the eyes of authoritarian patriarchal government instrumentalities.
Khoury has also come under some fire for preaching to the converted but she insists that she is not “preaching to the women who wear the veil.” Khoury says she is addressing the women who have learnt to subvert ‘the laws’ so that women can work together more openly and vocally for positive change.
In countries such as Syria, twenty five per cent of married women are regularly beaten according to recent research, with the perpetrator usually being a husband or close male relative. And the notorious Honor Killings still occur as punishment for pre- or post -marital affairs. The positive outcomes from work such as Khoury’s is the mainstreaming of sensitive women’s issues. Egyptian films, for example, have begun to question the pressure on women to remain virgins until marriage or to endure unfaithful or violent husbands.
In Minsk, Alexander Lukashenko, the tyrannical President, has managed to wrest and maintain control of the state by harnassing power from both politics and the arts. Via bribery and corruption, Lukashenko connects his ’cause’ to state-approved artists. And most notoriously, state-approved pop stars.
However, Belarus’ underground Free Theatre critiques the government and evades the censors by making bars and private homes its sphere of activity. Writers such as Tom Stoppard and Vaclav Havel have supported the work of Free Theatre; and in its short life the company has gained a loyal following. New writing designed to ‘blow up government taboos’ is the key feature, says founder Khalezin. Hundreds of Minsk residents risk police identification to attend. Dates and ever-changing venue details are available by a secret word-of-mouth code or internet listings. A recent show was entitled, Techniques for Breathing in a Sealed Space. One play was about a girl dying of cancer and the other, based on the testimonies of the wives of vanished or political prisoners, that are declared state ‘traitors’.
Anna Solomyanskaya, an actress with the group, read the monologue of a woman whose husband had disappeared after speaking out against Lukashenko. Holding back tears, she said: “I am optimistic that someday it will change for the better.” However, at recent performances police officers stood outside recording the identities of audience members. This is grim news indeed. And if legislative powers can so readily slide into the wrong hands, then perhaps it will not be long before non-smokers perform the Voltairean feat of “defending to the death, the smoker’s right to smoke.”
It seems more important than ever to closely examine the motives of those in power and to look back in wonder and terror at the appalling track record of humanity. For our collective history is slim on compassion, respect and tolerance. We cannot afford to take democracy and equity for granted. It has been too hard-won, and like anything important and vulnerable, it needs continual protection.
What constitutes society-friendly legislation and what constitutes the beginnings of state, cultural or religious tyranny? These are the uncomfortable questions for the descendants of those who suffered the legislative changes that gave way to the grotesque orgies of state-sanctioned violence in pre-war Germany.
The world has been filled with the terror ravaged cries of war victims since time immemorial. An endless procession of Men, Women and Children – their bodies and souls scattered to the four corners of the earth.
We simply do not have the track record to take anything for granted.
