‘Something like Truth’: Staging four monologues around truth and justice
Parna Pethe's innovative play 'Something Like Truth' brings together an all-women cast to explore complex themes of truth and justice through monologues
When Parna Pethe, a Pune-based actor, began reading Gurmehar Kaur’s Small Acts of Freedom, she was intrigued by the young writer’s ideas of truth and independence. However, much as she was fascinated with the text, Pethe found the task of adapting the book into a play too arduous. But these ideas, especially in the context of women, stayed with her. She began reading and looking for plays that would resonate with her thoughts.
That’s when she found Maili Chadar, or The Stained Shawl, and Truth and Justice, a collection of plays by Shanta Gokhale. The second play in the book was a collection of monologues on truth and justice, all set in different spaces—in France at the time of the Dreyfus affair (1894-1906), in Sri Lanka during the Civil War (1983-2009), and in Gujarat during the 2002 riots. They resonated deeply with Pethe, and she decided to bring them to stage as the play, Something Like Truth. “The monologues, in essence, help us make sense of the four pillars of democracy. But, they do so metaphorically," she says.
It wasn’t just the themes that resonated with Pethe. “I was struck by the structure of the play, and the fact that it had very little or no stage directions. It was exciting to discover the potential of theatricality in the monologues—of finding a form for content that was already so structured," she adds.
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Pethe assembled an all-women cast and crew with Ashwini Giri, Dusha, Kalyanee Muley and Sharvari Deshpande as actors. Aabha Soumitra and Maitrayee Joshi came on board as music director and movement designer, respectively. As a debutante director, she terms her process “experimental", and feels that she hasn’t developed a fixed method so far. “For the past few years, I’ve worked with different directors and experienced their varied processes as an actor. When I decided to direct, I wanted to create my own method," she elaborates.
For Something Like Truth, she began looking for images that would help her find a form and structure. She tried to understand the emotional graph, personal histories and the political undercurrents of the characters. “And then I bound them with live music and movement," says Pethe. “I didn’t want the performance to only be text based. It had to have movement as well. The music too was part of the process. We found a way to integrate it into the exercise of conceptualising the performance—it was a way to find our own theatricality."
Early on, Pethe met writer Shanta Gokhale, to understand in greater depth, her idea of truth and her intentions behind the text. “She was very kind and generous with her time. She gave me the freedom to make the script my own. She saw one of the later rehearsals too," says Pethe.
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Besides finding ways to integrate music and movement, Pethe had a few other challenges to conquer. All the cast members were experienced but hailed from different schools of acting. It was Pethe’s job to offer insights and make them feel comfortable with a different kind of a process. Eventually the team formed their own unique rituals. Before every show, they gather together to set a unique intent for the specific show. “We cannot change the form but we look at the new things we can explore in each show," she explains.
The play, first staged in January, has had 12 shows in Pune, two in Mumbai, and one at Urja Rangbhavan in Ahmednagar. Pethe believes that the last one was especially memorable, having played to an audience that had little exposure to theatre, let alone an experimental one in Hindi and English. “After the show, we did a Q&A session where the responses we received were overwhelming. They noticed the smallest of things and weren’t bogged down by the form," she says. “The school staff also watched the play and they interpreted it with so much depth. They could relate to the stories, including the ones set in France and Sri Lanka. There was no language barrier. It gave us the confidence to travel with the play beyond Pune and Mumbai."
On 21 June, 7pm, at Experimental Theatre, the National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai.
Prachi Sibal is a Mumbai-based culture writer.
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