This a very beautiful, very powerful show.
It’s testimonial theatre; that is, its purpose is to bear witness to the experience of a certain group of people.
Written by Amani Mahmoud and directed by Kersherka Sivakumaran, And What Will People Say? bears witness to those who suffer from domestic abuse in the Australian South Asian community.
We love our community, we are told, but there are dark places we need to talk about.
And that talk must involve deep listening, because the what will people say of the title is the idle gossip of those who don’t understand why a wife might need to leave an abusive husband.
The piece begins with a voice-over on a darkened stage. A woman tells us of the trauma she and her family have suffered at the hands of a man. She desperately wants to be heard, but she does not want to be seen; she believes nothing will be gained by shaming the perpetrator, her father, now an old man. It’s a deeply humane attitude (and it also hints at the ever widening circles of shame that can extend from any crime, any sin, waves of shame that threaten to overwhelm the perpetrator, the victim, the victim’s family, the community…..)
The piece uses several other devices to avoid the name-and-shame temptation and to present something more constructive. One is to have the story told through narration, read by an actor who moves between characters. Maithly Dhawan reads with a simple truthfulness that has maximum emotional impact.
The tale is told in three parts, and its telling, as against the choice of dramatic enactment, allows a fertile ambiguity as the listener decides if these are three parts of the one tale, or three different tales: are we going deeper or are we going broader? Dramatic enactment, for all its concrete embodiment of an issue – or, perhaps, because of it – lacks this richness, and so can struggle to present simultaneously the commonality of a problem and its multiple manifestations.
Interspersed between the parts of the narrative are magnificent dance sequences by a single performer, Gayatri Krishnamurthy. Working with tropes of South Asian dance, each sequence is suggestive of the narrative we’ve just heard, and this evocative echoing in a different artform is another creative choice that lifts the representation of the experience of abuse beyond limiting particulars. Accompanying the dance are Indu Balachandran on veena, Pirashanna Thevarajah on percussion and Narthana Kanagasabai on violin, creating music that is wonderfully expressive of both melancholy and the possibility of change.
The narratives themselves are superbly written, replete with detail that makes us see the moment and feel the pain. Though the identity of the narrator changes, the perspective remains female, which means the experience of the innocent take precedence over the behaviour of the abuser. Once again, the wisdom of the choice to use narration rather than enactment becomes apparent – the dramatic form, with its focus on conflict and action, all too easily grants centre stage to the abuser.
Ironically, one of the strengths of this piece is that we don’t know why the abuser acts as he does. He remains only a frightening unfathomable threat – which is a perfect delineation of how he is experienced by those who live with him.
But without offering insight into the cause of the problem, how does the piece hope to facilitate its solution? (And, yes, for the average piece of theatre, that might seem an utterly unrealistic expectation.)
But I think the answer to that question is threefold:
One answer is, that by so powerfully representing the pain and trauma created by abuse, the perpetrators will be shocked into an understanding of the impact of their behaviour. (I’m not sure if belief in such a possibility would be a sign of a quaint psychological naivety or of a laudable moral commitment to hope.)
Another answer could be, that by so powerfully representing the pain and trauma created by abuse, the community might soften its heart towards women who need to escape their abusers. (The title of the piece implies this is the outcome most hoped for by the creatives.)
And the final answer: it is sufficient Truth be told.
Paul Gilchrist
And What Will People Say? written by Amani Mahmoud and directed by Kersherka Sivakumaran,
at Pottery Lane Performance Space, Lane Cove, as part of the Sydney Fringe,
until 21 Sept.
Image supplied.
Theatre Red 