Page 306 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

Street Theatre in Maharashtra 281

In time members of the group became accustomed to advising each
other, with words, gestures, movements, intonation and the volume of
voice. Considering the social control which inhibits the man/woman
relations in a traditional society, four characteristic aspects of this effort
of grassroots dramatic participation should be highlighted:

1. If this control on gender relations can be exercised within small
groups of motivated social actors, it maintains its pressure
outside in society at large. However, the experience gained in
terms of personal relations within small groups proves to be
the best stepping-stone for becoming bold in public spheres.
Therefore, in this respect, the group must first think of itself as
a relational laboratory.
2. That experience of another sort of rapport is all the more easily
initiated in small groups with the play acting as a mediating
vehicle.
3. The repressive control of women’s behaviour in society is
challenged here by means of two trump cards: the solidarity
between the women of the group generates its own energy and
the play offers to women, who have united to perform the show,
an audience and an attentive collective hearing at the same time.
Both of these are otherwise unthinkable in normal life.
4. Women and men performing together projects a form of relation
which, in a play form, foreshadows a real alternative. No wonder
that it was extremely difficult for actors to play roles of couples.
They had to overcome tremendous inhibitions to succeed.

Lessons and Reactions

Between September 1992 and January 1998, the fifteen peasant women
and two male animators of the VCDA gave fifty-two representations of
their play lasting 30 to 40 minutes in central squares, public bus stops
and market squares of several villages in seven talukas of Pune district
(Maharashtra), in Aurangabad, Osmanabad and Ahmednagar districts
(Maharashtra), one performance in Pune city and one in Delhi at the
time of an international seminar. The reactions of women spectators,
themselves the first target audience, help us draw the first lessons of
the experience.