What She Said, to be staged in Bengaluru, is a retelling of The Ramayana from the lens of women

It is quite symbolic to watch a play by women actors directed by a woman playwright on International Women’s Day.

Written and directed by Gowri Ramnarayan, What She Said provides a voice to six lesser-known women characters from The Ramayana, and presents their tale from a unique perspective.

Gowri says all these tales have been narrated through the male gaze. “I wanted to write my own story, where I give a voice to women characters such as Urmila, Manthara, Surpanakha, Tara, Mandodari and Shanta, who are otherwise only known as somebody’s wife or daughter and who are second to Sita in the whole story.”

“I wanted to talk about women on the fringes of these stories and their struggles for survival,” she says.

The play, produced by JustUs Repertory, will have three actors — Sunandha Raghunathan, Akhila Ramnarayan and Aarabi Veeraraghavan, performing six roles. The monologues, which are in English, will segue into the next character, interspersed with live vocals by Srividya Vadlamani.

When Gowri started writing the play, she says, she realised the women in The Ramayana are quite contemporary. “They live among us. They go through the nitty-gritty of life’s experiences, the blood, sweat and tears every woman undergoes. They face gender discrimination, betrayals and injustice. I wanted to portray these women through this lens,” she says.

A still from the play What She Said. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

Gowri has chosen women from three different kingdoms. “There is the Kishkindha kingdom, the Ayodhya-Kosala kingdom and the Ravana kingdom. From there, it became a gendered story about women belonging to different social strata.”

Even though What She Said was performed once in Bengaluru for a small audience, this time, it is being staged on a bigger scale. After premiering in 2019, in Chennai, the pandemic forestalled the play’s performances in other cities, which the playwright now wants to rectify.

Gowri believes there is great advantage in using mythology to talk about modern times. “Everybody knows the story, so we don’t have to start from the beginning. Always perceived as an idealistic straightforward narrative, The Ramayana can now be presented to audiences with its many complexities and ambiguities.”

How does one create an entire monologue about Shanta, the lesser-known daughter of Dasharatha and Rama’s elder sister? Gowri says that is the fun part. “Shanta was given away in adoption because Dasharatha wanted a son. Her adoptive father later married her off to a sage. Since I didn’t have a lot of information about her, it gave me a chance to be creative.”

What She Said will be staged on March 8, at Bangalore International Centre at 7pm. RSVP on the website.