The other day a young theatre enthusiast said to me “You can only talk about sex on stage, you can’t DO it!” And maybe she is right.
For many years sex has always been a lucrative ingredient of commercial theatre. Even today plays like Just Don’t Do It, Only Mangni No Shaadi, and the soon to be launched Four Play deal with topics like infidelity and impotence, but only as a source of humour. Actually showing it is another matter altogether.
By its very nature, sexual intercourse is a clumsy act to watch. Cinema and television use cutaways and close ups to cover the awkwardness; but in theatre it has to be live.
Therefore it was unique to attend three non-commercial productions recently, whose plots were held together by the sexual act; and each play chose to represent it in a different way.
Jester Productions’ Equus was by far the boldest. Remarkable considering they were the youngest troupe of the three I saw. The actors were comfortable shedding some of their clothing. And the nervous titters of the audience didn’t distract them at all. It was played beautifully and convincingly. The scene is intrinsic to the rest of the plot; the protagonist’s inability to lose his virginity in a stable, because he is being watched by the horses for whom he has an almost godlike respect. The guilt he feels while performing the act, causes him to blind the horses. Had the scene not been handled delicately, the entire climax of the play would have been destroyed.
Love Puke, on the other hand, had no such baggage. It is a story about four couples and their many couplings. Their relationships are defined by sex, and in some cases are only about “making love”. There were perhaps 10 simulated sex scenes. But this time very little was realistic, using other devices to convey both humour and poignancy. In one scene the couple simply sat either side of the bed, and moaned monotonously according their level of arousal. The person that “finished” would hold up a placard saying “First”. There was hardly any physical contact. And yet the play effectively took us through the politics of the bedroom. Particularly enjoyable was a sequence where, the only thing the boy did was play with the toes of his partner, and it was still able to communicate the entire scope of their relationship.
After these two relatively successful dramatisations, I was quite looking forward to AKvarious’ Second Hand Emotions. A collection of short unconnected vignettes exploring situations that lead to sex — how and why it happens. Some of the writing was interesting, and the stories not without insight. But the actual depiction of the act was most disappointing. There seemed to be nothing honest, comfortable or tender about any of the “sex acts”. The device of hiding the action behind a platform only made the artificiality of the scenarios more prominent; and the beauty or violence of the act was lost because of the unimaginative staging.
The only moment of true tenderness was in the homosexual love story, when one actor put his leg across the thigh of his partner. It was a moment of affection. It told of the culmination of their act as a result of love, not agenda. This comfort unfortunately was lacking in the other pieces. Simulating sex on stage, whether naturalistically or stylistically, is not an easy thing. To convincingly “fake” intimacy is incredibly difficult. The fact that in the last two months alone almost 30 actors in Bombay are willing to shed their inhibitions and try it, speaks volumes for where our city’s theatre is heading. Theatre is an actors’ medium. The play is communicated through them, and only when they take the lead can stories like these be told convincingly. Directors take note — it’s now up to you to take the clumsiness away.