CHENNAI: The play opens. It is the first episode and as their names are announced, the players make dramatic entries— one somersaults her way through, while another dances into the stage, in a florescent pink costume. But there is a problem. “We can’t do the play,” says one of the actors. Why? “Oh, You’ve not eaten lunch?! Oh no, now you have no energy! Oh, Not that? It’s the costumes? You forgot them? Not that either? “Voice is the problem,” says the actor. Voice? There is enough sound to reach the audience, then why is voice a problem?
The episode cuts to another scene. On a bus, a few men are passing comments at a girl; she smirks at them. Then her phone rings. She answers the call and speaks to her friend in a male voice. The men immediately burst into fits of laughter.
“When people look at us, most of us look like women. But the voice, the male voice, that is like a slap on our face,” says actor-director Living Smile Vidya about her experience as a transwoman, on the sidelines of the rehearsals of her play Color of Trans.
It is the debut play of the theatre group Panmai, a first- of-its-kind transgender theatre group in the State, founded by three transgenders including Vidya.
“Every time, people stare at us or are shocked hearing our voice, be it when we place an order at a hotel or when we answer a phone call in the loo. “You are a transgender, you are a transgender,” she says about her experience as a transgender that shaped the play.
Infusing it with humour, with clown figures in several episodes, the play has taken ideas from cabarets to rap music, audio-visual presentations to dance movements, to narrate the experiences of three transgenders, including one transman.
Narrated in a set of seven episodes, the play comprises the light-hearted ‘Voices’ about the troubles posed by a voice that doesn’t fall in line with your gender and the hard-hitting ‘My Ruined Vagina’ and ‘Scar.’
Living Smile Vidya, who is just back to India after completing a course at the London International School of Performing Arts, has used the Device Theatre mode to shape the play.
“We have tried to make it as light-hearted as possible. Even I wouldn’t like to go through one hour of serious stuff. Humour and satire are the most effective when it comes to spreading a message. They entertain you, make you laugh and also think,” she says.
Angel Glady, one of the founders of the group and a film actor, has acted in the South Korean play Tuida.
Vinodhini Vaidyanathan plays the transman R J Gee Imman Semmalar, one of the founders of the group.
“It was a challenge for me. Being a cis-woman, as in a biological woman, I come with a third person perspective as against the others for whom it is an insider’s point of view. But I’ve taken care that the play is not an imitation. It comes with the research, and understanding I have developed about the issue,” she says.
The play will be staged at SPACES, No 1 Elliot’s Road, Besant Nagar on September 27 and 28.