Set in a restive period of peasant rebellion, with a nervous State responding with brutal crackdown, Mrityu Ghar is a searing Bangladeshi play that focuses on the tormented lives of three women who are jailed and tortured for their political activities against the State.
Written by Atik Rahman and performed by the Mukul Ghetto Tigers, Bangladesh with direction by Mukul Ahmed, the play was staged at the 21st Bharat Rang Mahotsav’s parallel theatre festival of the National School of Drama at Adishkati theatre in Auroville.
With the life of three women — Asha, Kalpana and Bina — at stake, women’s resistance in the face of gruesome police brutality unleashed by the State serves as the backdrop of the play.
German roots
Mrityu Ghar is an adaptation of celebrated German playwright Dea Loher’s first play Olga’s Room (published in 1992) that traced the life and travails of the German-Jewish communist rebel tortured in the Nazi Germany.
The hour-long play depicts the life of the three women as they are pitted against their torturer, Zafar, with whom lies their fate in the jail.
With minimal props — a table, stool, and a pair of thick ropes dangling in the backdrop — an evil symbolism pervades the setting.
Eventually Asha, who is pregnant like Olga, will be placed in a gas chamber. Her story is a tale of survival as she struggles to hold onto her disintegrating sense of self.
Asha symbolises defiance in the face of most hostile of conditions, as she challenges a sadist like Zafar.
“The women are tortured by Pakistan police but we wanted to show the way police brutality becomes the face of authoritarian repression...which is something that resonates across the world, peoples and periods,” said Mr. Ahmed. “Through the dark events that unfold in the lives of these women, Asha stands as a symbol of hope and optimism that social change is possible, whatever sacrifice it may take,” said the director.