Page 301 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

276 Hema Rairkar

not as conversant as these performers are with these folk forms
(the performers were professionals belonging to specific, and
often even untouchable castes), though they are familiar with
the performances and their contents. Moreover, traditional folk
forms (especially religious forms: gondhal, kirtan and katha)
1
are appropriated today by various kinds of social and political
interests.
4. The flourishing modern professional and amateur theatre in the
city is unknown to them.
5. The expression of feminine dramatic forms was a profession of
the courtesans.

Choice of Expressive Forms

The fifteen female and two male animators of the VCDA study group
on the phenomenon of the desertion of young married women by their
in-laws found many reasons for this rejection; such was already the
case with the harassment of women by their husbands and in-laws.
An analysis made in a study group of all these reasons has not much
in common with the requirements of a dramatic action. How to stage
and project the results of the analysis in a play to be performed in
the village square? The wish to stage the results of the investigation
met with a question, that of the choice of subject. Then came the
requirement of finding the form of physical expression adequate to the
subjects. But how were they to decide on these issues? It was decided
to choose subjects and forms which go better with a visual representa-
tion. Five central themes came forward: committing suicide by setting
oneself on fire, committing suicide by jumping into a well, suspicious
in-laws, polygamy and exorbitant dowry. The first two themes were
immediately chosen because the group was particularly impressed by
two recent accounts of such suicides.
As these themes were not internally linked with one another, how
could one go from one to the other in the play? It was decided to
link them by dancing in a circle between each figure with a song ac-
companying it. For this form corresponds to the customary practice
of women singing and dancing in a circle at the time of Gauri and
Nag Panchami (these are women’s festivals, generally in the months