Projects

Silence! The Court is in Session

Silence! The Court is in Session is another hardhitting play by Vijay Tendulkar, the Bombay playwright. Tendulkar focuses on the abuse of women in paternalistic society, as well as another taboo subject, infantaside.

In 1993, students helped me to select the play from among many modern Indian plays we were then studying in our Indian theatre class. Our objective was to choose a work which could be simply built and toured outside Stony Brook. We had made an agreement with Andy Tsubaki, a colleague at the University of Kansas, to exchange productions, free of cost to each other. We toured from one small college to another performing Silence through the midwest over our spring break.

The play is ideally suited for touring and for college students. It takes place in an empty space which is to be converted by the actors into a performance space by a band of itinerate actors on tour to a small town in Maharashtra. Much like the work of Pirandello, it raises the issue of what is real and what false in society. As a form of rehearsal, “actors” improvise a courtroom scene in which a female school teacher is accused of an illicit sexual relationship with a male teacher. Sex outside marriage is still a taboo subject in India. Silence tears down many barriors. Costumes and props attempted to duplicate those of the original Bombay production.

Vinay Patak, one of the cast, eventually graduated from Stony Brook and returned to India where he has now begun an impressive career in Bollywood films, as well as acting on the stage. Recently he appeared in Mira Nair’s film Rain.