To the streets: Sample Plays

1. What is your name?

- is a play about the ways in which Dalits, or “untouchables”, themselves are made to participate in their own suppression. In many places in Nepal, Dalits are not allowed to enter teashops, people’s homes, temples, etc. It is a peculiar type of racism, however, because it is not always immediately apparent from a person’s appearance whether he or she is Dalit or not. Outside of their own village, where everybody knows their families, dalits often lie about their background.

In this play, a tailor (this is one of the “untouchable” occupational castes) has gone to the bazaar for some work. In the first scene, a girl from his village recognizes him, and reminds him he is late in sewing her some new clothes. The audience now knows he is a dalit. The next scene is in a teashop. We see a customer and the owner discussing loosely about life. The customer throws out some remarks how dalits are rumored to have entered this teashop lately. The owner denies it - this would have meant that his shop was “polluted.” The tailor then enters the shop, orders a cup of tea and falls into conversation with the other customer. The owner and the other customer do not know he is a dalit. The conversation goes along nicely, until the other customer at one point asks the dalit his family name. Answering honestly would reveal his caste identity. The play stops here - the actors freeze with the question hanging in the air. The animator enters the stage and explains that the actors have become stuck. They don’t know what they tailor should answer. Should he tell his name truthfully or lie to prevent the conflict from being exposed?

Whatever the audience answer, the story unfolds through their ideas. New situations emerge, the actors freeze and the audience again how the characters respond.

2. Chameli

- is a play about the exploitation of agricultural laborers, and in particular the practice of laborers children working for the landlords in far away bazaars and cities. This is quite common among former bonded laborers in South-western Nepal. Landowners demand that laborers send their children to work in city homes in return for the parent's right to farm the land.

In the play, a family of bonded laborers, or kamaiyas, has been left landless and jobless after the government’s emancipation declaration. The father goes to speak to the local Brahman landowner. The landowner offers him half of the harvest of his a certain field, on the condition that the laborer send his daughter to work for him. The labor returns to tell his family. The mother agrees, as they are desperate for food. However, on the to send his daughter he meets another laborer who had farmed the field last year. He accuses the father of using his daughter to "outbid" him, and take his land from him. As they are about to fight, the play stops. The animator asks the audience what the father should do.

3. Father and Son

- deals with the reluctance of older generation of "untouchables" to challenge the oppression they live with in their own lives. The play centers on an older dalit man, whose son has returned from Kathmandu. The son, whose name is Chetana, meaning awareness in Nepali, wants to challenge the caste rules in the village that discriminate against them. The father is afraid of the consequences. He feels his son is not aware of the local situation anymore.

The play opens in a village teashop. Due in part to a misunderstanding, in part to the son's provocation of his father, the old man tries to leave without cleaning his own cup, as is required of low castes. The teashop owner strikes the old man. Seeing this the son intervenes and soon the police are involved also. The father begs his son to leave it be, but the son is enraged. The police arrest him and carry him of. The father collapses crying in front of the owner. The play freezes and the animator asks the audience asked, "What should the old man do?"