BENGALURU : With March coming to an end, and the hullaballoo around women’s day drawing to a close, a production centered-around women’s equality is set to be staged in the city this weekend. Directed by Ashish Sen, Dario Fo’s The Open Couple stars Rubi Chakravarti and Rakesh Batra.
Contradictory to the commonly-used phrase, everything is fair in love and war, The Open Couple shows how everything is not so fair for women in most relationships. Dario Fo’s play uses farce to explore the sexual politics between the man and the woman in a marriage.
Though written in 1983, the context and subtext of the script stand relevant to most even today. ‘Open relationships’ an idea that many in today’s Tinder-generation think is ‘in’, is one that has been tried and tested since then. The play makes you look at how ‘open’ and fair a relationship can get in a patriarchal set-up. As the director puts it, ‘rib-tickling humour’ is used to drive home pertinent issues that plague society. “The play talks about equity in a funny way.
You laugh, and with the underlying laughter, there are a lot of lessons to take back home. Gender is an issue we need to look at as a country as a whole,” says Sen. The play is part of an annual fund-raising endeavor by Community Services of Bangalore, and will be staged at the Taj West End on March 30 at 7.30pm.