Silence! TheCourt Is In Session by playwright Vijay Tendulkar, was originally written in Marathi as "Shāntatā! Court Chalu Aahe". It was staged for the first time in 1967, and has been translated into several languages and adapted by various theatre over
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Silence! TheCourt Is In Session by playwright Vijay Tendulkar, was originally written in Marathi as “Shāntatā! Court Chalu Aahe”. It was staged for the first time in 1967, and has been translated into several languages and adapted by various theatre over the years.
The play is a social satire on middle-class society, particularly its treatment of women. There are also telling asides, like the failed lawyer who takes acting and the adopted son who is treated like an errand-boy.
With The little background info I had about the play, I had expected it to be grimand intense. The “light”beginning took me by surprise. There’s trivial banter, lots of laughter. A play Is Being Enacted Within The Play, and through the mock-play.
Over the course of the first act, the tone gradually changes from jovial to menacing. This shift is masterfully done. A lot of credit goes to the powerful script for that. The interval break happens when Ms. Benare triesto escape from the room but finds the door jammed. Post-interval, the chirpy Ms. Benare turns quiet. She sits stone-like while the others pass judgments.
There is as sequence towards the end when the lawyer walks amidst the audience denouncing single, independent women. An interesting tactic here was that when saying his piece, he deliberately chose women in the audience to make eye contact with. The sentence of “Women are not fit to be independent!”. A spine-chilling moment, that.
In the climax, the lights dim, and under a single spotlight Ms. Benare delivers a monologue. This is meant a profound statement for women who betrayed, abused and blamed by society for their “unwomanly” conduct.
Silence! The Court Is In Session must have been very progressive for its time; that it is so popular decades after it was written is proof of its strength. That said ,I felt that the final did not come off very well, maybe because the story is dated. I could not shake off the feeling that Ms. Benare was not so much mistreated by society. Why was she going around asking anyone to marry her? Why did she make multiple attempts at suicide?
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I generally complain that the quality of women’s acting in plays almost never matches
up to the men’s. No such complaint for this one.
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