Tattoo

Tattoo is the tale of a dysfunctional family, a phenomenon that is becoming frighteningly commonplace. It is the story of the imprisonment of the spirit, of incarceration that occurs in the home and through loved and trusted people. Based on real life stories, this German play (which has been adapted ) exposes a hidden and shocking aspect of human society–incest–that has had a terrifying impact on impressionable young minds; leading to psychopathic disorders.

Tattoo is also about the subjugation of women in a patriarchal world.

CAST

MR. WARIS / WOLF              –    Ramesh Thakur
MOTHER  / JULIE                 –    Smita Bharti / Sohaila Kapur / Arti Nayar
ANITA                                       –   Jyotsna Sharma
LALI / LULU                          –   Sonali Sharma
PAUL                                         –   Zain Bhana / Gautam Mehra

CREDIT

Written by                                    :   Dea Loher
Adapted and Directed By       :   Sohaila Kapur.
Lights                                              :  Ishwar Singh / Sohaila Kapur
Sound                                              :  Pamela Prakash / Neeraj Yadav
Projection                                     : Shekhar Murugan / Neeraj Yadav
Supported by                               : Goethe Institute.

Latest shows: May 11, 2014 at the Alliance Francais, New Delhi & May 31, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi

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Review of Tattoo:

http://www.thehindu.com/features/friday-review/theatre/a-darker-shade-of-truth/article6036602.ece

PRESS

“It was a subject so disturbing that director Sohaila Kapur waited five years before putting Tattoo, a German play about incest, on stage. “Even then, many actors refused,” says Kapur of the Hungry Heart Festival. The play, which premieres on November 7, is “two hours of grim intensity”.

Written by contemporary German playwright Dea Loher, Tattoo goes deep into a family where a father has been abusing his daughter over the years. A glimmer of hope emerges when the girl falls in love and makes her bid for freedom, only to be foiled by a weak lover and the ghosts of her past. The names and the costume have been Indianised: Loher’s protagonist Mr Baker becomes Mr Waris, played by theatre veteran Ramesh Thakur, while the rebel younger daughter Lulu becomes Lali. The abused daughter, Anita, has been played by Jyotsana Sharma, a far cry from her bubbly persona in Hungry Heart’s previous production Ouch. Mr Waris’ wife, enacted by Smita Bharti, remains nameless — a symbol of her psychological trauma that reduces her “into an animal that’s been beaten into submission”.

Kapur has added a few strains of music but it only adds to the tension. “There is no comic relief, it remains intense all through,” says Kapur. Produced in association with the Goethe Institute, Tattoo has been treated like a book, with a screen lighting up with chapter titles such as “Love”, “Marriage” and “Tattoo” before every sequence. As one member of the cast says, “The effect is cathartic.”

—-  Indian Express