Tanika is a prolific and award-winning playwright, whose latest adaptation for the stage was the cosmopolitan revival of the Norwegian 1870s classic: A Doll’s House. First created by the European dramatist, Henrik Ibsen, this modern rendition is set in Kolkata during the time of the British Raj in 1879 at the height of western imperialism. “The business of who holds the pen is very important,” Tanika stated. “There aren’t enough playwrights of a South Asian background: less so than even black authors. I don’t particularly subscribe to identity politics, but do feel that it’s important to represent colonial history through the eyes of the cultures colonised. Minority perspectives must be told.” Indeed, Tanika’s A Doll’s House maintains Ibsen’s Realist focus on the challenging emotional conflict experienced by a woman whose marriage is moneyed yet ultimately empty while deftly reshaping it. As opposed to the ‘white’ metropolitan housewife Nora, her protagonist is the Bengali middle-class Niru whose romantic struggle is shot through her transactional mixed-race marriage with an English bank manager, Tom Helmer, who has great social status in imperial India.
“Queen Victoria had just been made Empress of India.” Instead of prayers, we hear of mantras, there is talk of silk saris in lieu of lace petticoats, and a musical backdrop of live tablas serenades us as opposed to a drum kit. “Having creative Bengali parents, there was a lot of arts in conversation such as the legendary literary Tagore!” However, importantly, as well as paying homage to an underrepresented narrative, Tanika’s richly developed context also highlights racial inequality as an often-hushed extension of institutionalised patriarchy. This works well with the already intersectional narrative of class and gender within the play. “People tend to feel especially uncomfortable about the issue of race, perhaps because it isn’t as widely discussed, but that oppression operates on the same concept as that of women and the labouring class. They go hand in hand”.
Indeed, the patronising phrases issued by Ibsen’s entitled husband figure to his colourful yet passive wife, such as ‘sky lark’ and ‘my little squirrel’, ring twice as loudly, given the doubly marginalised context of South-Asian femininity. Not only must Tanika’s Niru perform the role of the perfect disciplined woman, but also that of the cultured colonial national in order to be socially accepted. ‘My Little Indian Princess,’ Helmer assures her. The economic system of moral superiority exercised by the white bourgeois male then clearly extends from the domestic to the international space, making the tyranny of that traditional identity twice as heavy. This is further emphasised by the contrasting physiques of Niru, played by the talented Anjana Vasan, and Tom Helmer, played by Elliot Cowan.
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The petite frame of the former is uncomfortably dwarfed by Crown’s taller one, appearing both disturbing and ludicrous, viscerally reflecting the hypocritical ideology to which they subscribe. However, our post-modern playwright also remains loyal to the existential complexity of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. “Anjana really committed to the character of Nora, who was always a full-blooded heroine,” Tanika commented. “You can’t mess with the original text too much: I just put my take on it.” Where Nora exploits her husband’s infantilisation of her to preserve her financial security, Anjana’s Niru: “explicitly panders to Helmer’s exoticisation of her too, evoking the additional power dynamic.” This makes Niru definitively complicit in the elaborate domestic charade. By wholly deconstructing the patriarchal world at the heart of the Helmer family tension then, Tanika’s imagining not only mesmerizingly re-writes the original, but also cleverly enhances it. As Niru seductively convinces the household physician, the pro-Indian Dr Rank, who pines after her, to tie bells around her ankles, the underlying dissatisfaction with husband, Helmer, virtually throbs in plain view. Ultimately, this is a story about a woman who tries her best to be happy despite the binding social constraints.
“Feminism runs as if a river underneath Ibsen’s play”, Tanika elaborated. “It’s the reason I love it. The playwright never openly identified with the movement, but he was one of the first European writers to have a woman as the main character. He claimed simply to want to describe humanity.” This unaffected exploration of a women’s reality is likely why the ending of A Doll’s House became so famous, emerging hard-hitting and honest. Nora, who has effectively played the unrewarding superficial role of porcelain doll, finally walks out on her husband and children, smashing the entire cushy illusion. In valuing her individual freedom above all, this act is the very foundation of Feminism. “As you watch, you’re thinking, why keep going like that? Just be yourself!”
Equally committed to “telling an authentic story first,” Tanika’s adaptation naturally preserves Ibsen’s timelessly transcendent message, also inviting a modern reading for our time. This is that of the ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl.’ Again, elevated by the spirited Anjana, who exuberantly dances across the stage, and excitedly boasts her palatial home to the new help at the beginning of the play, Niru’s character evokes the phenomenon of a persistent psychological femininity. Although women today enjoy much improved legal and social protection, a forceful male gaze continues to undercut it: concrete in its intensity. Women are still measured by an erotic double standard whereby they are expected to excite and entertain yet remain caring towards men at the expense of honouring a full inner life. If a woman falls short of either binary, she might be considered flighty or a drag, or worse still, selfish. However, it is this one-dimensional expectation that is wrong and not a woman wishing to stay true to her want.
In A Doll’s House, Nora’s agency is recast in an empowering way after she learns that her husband would put his reputation before her safety in the emotional climax. She then no longer regressively stifles herself through automatically mirroring a gender role, realising she deserves better. She decides that she should not settle for man who demands the most of her when he shamelessly walks around being a lesser version. The striking vibrancy of Indian culture on the set of Tanika’s adaptation at once poignantly amplifies the subservient flipside of having to give a palatable performance. To confront the ugly underbelly of the norm, the play tells us, is better than living a lie. And so, itself unbound expression, free of sanitisation and imposed caveats, Tanika’s A Doll’s House makes its own powerful statement about the grandest paradox that is life: subjectivity must be celebrated to really live in objective truth. “Ibsen’s play is one of the most frequently staged,” Tanika asserted, “and yet not once has a South Asian actress played the lead in the UK. It’s a dream to see Ibsen’s protagonist brought so dynamically to life: a moment of true national pride!” We are each, it seems, our own meaningful nuance.
What characters did you enjoy developing?
Originally, Das’ character is written as a simple blackmailer. I look at the hierarchal trapping of the Indian caste system through him too. He represents the beginning of Indian nationalism in his revolutionary beliefs.
Similarly, I developed the friendship between the maid and Niru. She leaves her own children to earn money by being the nanny to a ‘white’ household. In that sense, she’s tragic and maternal.
What advice might you give to young or aspiring playwrights?
See as many plays as you can and if you can’t try and read them: study your craft. Theatre is not like a novel, which focuses on editorial skill such as writing beautiful sentences. You’ve got to be attentive to action. S*** has to happen! Also, a good joke or two won’t hurt! Even Helmer has his laughable moments.
T: @Tanika_Gupta
