Her Story

It’s a story that arose from newspaper reports on crimes against women. But the Actor Factor Company,which won the Sahitya Kala Parishad Award last year for The Red Corridor,realised that “preaching about violence against women would make no sense to an audience immune to such daily reports”. So,they packed their tale of women and gender power in a play that runs like a psychological thriller.

The 90-minute play unfolds in the visitor’s room of the fictitious Victoriaganj Central Jail,where a young widow,Leela Mitra,keeps coming to meet an inmate,Adrian Pillai. She’s been there 20 times already but even the prisoner is in the dark about her reasons. “Everything is forgotten until the Leela Tapes get accidentally discovered in the shoe cabinet of a house on Mall Road,by its new tenants. The play is a transcript of her recorded dialogue with Pillai,” says director Sunit Sinha. He adds that the sets are dark,the background score somber. To heighten the tension,the six-member cast spends long interludes miming without uttering a word.

“Only in the end does one realise that a woman who doesn’t get justice from the system must then look outside the law,” says Sinha.