In the one-woman show performed without sets, 27-year-old Sarah brings eight women from different parts of the world to life by changing her voice, height and accent, with a green scarf as her only prop. “I was too stunned to speak… Before this, I thought it was only women in India who have to bear the brunt of their husbands, boyfriends and governments. Now, I realise that women all over
the world face the same problems,” said an
overwhelmed 19-year-old.
JUST A GREEN SCARF TO BREACH BARRIERS OF BIAS
BY MADHUMITA BHATTACHARYYA Calcutta, Nov. 20: Inequality without barriers is the question Sarah Jones addresses in Women Can’t Wait! And on Tuesday morning, the New Yorker broke artistic barriers to take her message straight to “the people who matter”: Students. “An all-women’s college, yeah, even I went to one,” Sarah exclaimed, as she took centrestage in the packed auditorium of Loreto College. Sarah, who attended the “elite, all-women’s” Bryn Mawr college, in Pennsylvania, took no time to “connect” with her young audience. The 50-minute performance that had riveted the diverse audience at Gyan Manch on Monday evening seemed to have an even greater impact on the college students.
In the one-woman show performed without sets, 27-year-old Sarah brings eight women from different parts of the world to life by changing her voice, height and accent, with a green scarf as her only prop. “I was too stunned to speak… Before this, I thought it was only women in India who have to bear the brunt of their husbands, boyfriends and governments. Now, I realise that women all over the world face the same problems,” said an overwhelmed 19-year-old.
The response from the teachers, during an interactive session, was similar. “In times of war, it becomes evident that men are aware of differences that divide man, but it is women who are conscious of the similarity that binds them,” observed one.
The response of the students seemed to make it a mission accomplished for the poet-activist. But Sarah, the realist, insists that this is just the start. The message conveyed by the play, commissioned by Equality Now, an international human rights organisation, is one against state-sanctioned discrimination. But, while laws are “glaring symbolic problems”, Sarah admits that “change has to start at the level of socialisation of children”, teaching them to accept women and men as equals.
“Think of discrimination against women as discrimination against half the population,” challenges Sarah, addressing a wide range of issues, like rape exemption, honour-killing and female genital mutilation, across the globe, from India to Kenya and France.
Sarah, who is “just waiting for the day the show is retired”, believes each community must find its own method to promote equal rights. “I am not going to come in here and say that you have to teach the way they taught me back home, because that wasn’t perfect either.”
From laws against letting women work at night, to “female castration” practised in Africa, the actress who appeared in productions such as The ****** Monologues chose a wide range of problems to show that “women all over the world are treated like second-class citizens”.
Sarah, who believes there is a “continuum of inequality” connecting women everywhere, said: “What does it mean to say that people are ‘more’ or ‘less’ equal in different countries? It’s just a matter of degrees. Even Hillary Clinton can’t drive in Saudi Arabia.”
Anti-feminist sentiment has not passed Sarah by, either. “Men have come up to me to ask me why we should have a women’s centre and not one for men… They should think about the situation of women before they talk about injustice perpetrated against them.” For her, resistance from patriarchy is no longer the issue. “We have to move beyond that, and say ‘Now what?’”
THE CITY