By Ramavarman.T (India)
photo credit: Arv Anchal
Reality is increasingly becoming weird and strange and the plays of the French playwright Jean Genet, which powerfully portray the absurdities of life, have relevance in the contemporary society, said Soo Ming, the theatre director and actor from Malaysia.
Ming was presenting his play “The Maids” at the ongoing International Theatre Festival of Kerala (ITFoK) here. The play is a Malaysian adaptation of Genet’s work with the same name. Issues like onslaught of capitalism and consumerism, corruption and destruction of environment are disturbing many, and are triggering conflicting pulls and pressures in their minds.
The play tells the story of two housemaids who live oppressed under their master and mistress. To overcome the agonies of daily life, they play the roles of their master and mistress when the latter are not at home. Through such role plays the characters bring out the multiple dimensions of oppression like the use of English language to dominate, sexual exploitation and economic deprivation.
Replying to questions, the director said, he had used stylisation in the play to project the twists and turns in the personal and public lives of the people. But it is debatable whether the stylisation was able to invoke intense eerie feeling communicated by Genet’s original work.
The adaptation is certainly an interesting attempt as it throws open the possibilities of the absurd theatre, which was popular in the 1970s and 1980s, to explore the complexities and intimidation nature of the present day social order.
(Originally published on The Times of India, 25 January 2019)
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