Hell hath no fury like morality scorned

It is not always easy to reflect the hard-hitting realities of our society through staged plays, but ‘Rehearsal’ managed to pull it off this past week, using a courtroom scenario to give ample food for thought regarding the scathing societal attitudes towards independent women.

The tragicomedy, adapted from the Hindi version of a Marathi play ‘Chi Sau Ka’ by Vijay Tendulkar, was held at IBA City campus and adapted to make it more relatable for the local audience. Meesum Naqvi from the National Academy of Performing Arts directed the play which was presented by Stage Nomad Productions and starred mainly IBA graduates with a flair for acting.

‘Rehearsal’ opens with a conversation between schoolteacher Saba Azmi (played by Faiza Mahmood) and Deepak Saamant (Yogeshwar Karera), the guide showing her around the theatre where she is supposed to be performing later with a group.

Saba, who is awaiting her troupe, expresses her delight to Saamant in returning to the stage. She seems fascinated by him and tries to make him comfortable around her by conversing with him about his life. Saamant, shown as a rather naive individual, shows Saba a toy parrot which he tells her he has bought for his nephew.

However, Saba soon starts to feel angst and shares with Saamant that she is fond of children because they don’t break your trust. Saamant soon lets her be as other cast members arrive including Kazmi (Shah Hasan), Kaavish Khan (Moiz Khan), Selsun Mathews (Arsalan), Nawab sahib (Hammad Athar), Shagufta Nawab (Mushk Kaleem) and Babar Nawab (Farhan Malik), otherwise called Babloo.

However, a certain Ansari is missing from the cast and it is mutually decided by the group that Saamant would play his role. Saamant feels no qualms in declaring that he has never witnessed a courtroom scene so it’s unwise to cast him but the crew comes up with a plan to hold a ‘fake’ courtroom drama so Saamant may learn from it.

Saba interjects that instead of rehearsing the drama about the possession of nuclear weapons, which they were there to perform, the troupe should change the storyline, unaware that she is setting a trap for herself.

It soon becomes evident that the cast members despise Saba who is a lively and independent woman and speaks her mind. Without her input, the group agrees that in this rehearsal Saba would be asked to play the role of a defendant while Kaavish, Selsun, Shagufta and Babloo would play witnesses. Kazmi who plays the lawyer for both sides eventually transforms completely and takes the role of prosecutor who would go to any length to target the defendant.

The group decides that Saba is standing trial for infanticide in the made-up courtroom and the rehearsal begins. However, as the supposed hearing progresses, the accusations keep piling on. The witnesses start saying that they have seen her with a man [Ansari] at his house at night and also accusing her of carrying his child out of wedlock.

Saba, who has been laughing off all the accusations all this time, stops when eventually each and every one present there starts leaping to her character assassination.

“With a lifestyle like hers, as a single, independent woman, we do not even need any evidence to prove that she has committed a crime. She laughs loudly with other men around and doesn’t spare a thought about what society thinks about her,” says Kazmi, the lawyer at point.

Saamant who is the most unaware of the group’s actual intentions, tries to follow the others by reading out passages relevant to her situation from a digest, believing that whatever was happing there was not real, without realising that Saba’s relationship with Ansari (the missing cast member) is being brought to light on that stage.

Saba, who was in a relationship with Ansari before he left her and is actually pregnant with his child, starts to feel uncomfortable with the proceedings and comes to realise that she would not be having the last laugh anymore. Despite having a lot to say in her defence, she remains quiet because she knows that the accusations were being heaped on her because she was a woman and a man would’ve very likely gotten away with the things she was being accused of.

The actors did a commendable job and provide apt comic relief when the scene called for it. Being a tragicomedy, ‘Rehearsal’ has many moments which cracked up the audience – from the quips between the actors, the bickering of Nawab sahib and Shagufta or Kaavish’s overacting or the moment when the so-called court did not have the Holy Quran for the so-called witnesses to swear upon and they end up using a dictionary. But essentially, the play is a commentary on the biased lenses through which a society looks at independent women – portrayed very aptly by the lawyer who makes a case against women empowerment because, he argues, it would lead to the destruction of the institution of marriage and then demands the harshest possible punishment for Saba.

At the end, the judge, as well as the attendees in the courtroom unanimously agreed that pre-marital relationships which may lead to children out wedlock are worse than taking the life of a child.

“Better were the times when women were married off at a younger age, because otherwise they indulge in acts which threaten our customs and traditions,” Nawab, who plays the judge, observes.

The play concludes with Saamant handing the toy parrot he had bought for his nephew as well as a bottle of poison to Saba. The move very subtly taps into the notion of how society takes away the freedom from a woman of choosing what to do with her body – give birth or have an abortion – under the garb of morality.