Dates can take on particular significance. Reyhaneh Jabbari's harrowing saga under Iranian authority cuts to the unfortunate date 07/07/07. The then 19 year old Reyhaneh stabbed Morteza Abdolali Sarbandi in the back in self-defense as he attempted to rape her. She was put in prison for stabbing a man who as it turned out was a former employee of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence. Reyhaneh was promptly imprisoned and all her pleas of protecting herself and of Sarbandi's own crime were lost on the prison officers. Court proceedings ensued. There might have been hope in the beginning but eventually Reyhaneh was executed as the Iranian court proclaimed her guilty of pre-mediated murder. Even Sarbandi's family refused her the pardon that would have saved her life. The hanging took place on 25th October 2014. Reyhaneh Jabbari was 26 years old then. Her case was met with huge hue and cry among Human Rights' watchers around the world and Amnesty International declared that it was a "deeply flawed investigation and trial".
Religious and authoritarian countries such as Iran have abused human rights systemically. Reyhaneh's story stands out not only because she was a victim of her political system, but also because her own written accounts from her incarceration are testimony to this endemic brutality. They paint a poignant and vivid picture of a young girl's turmoil, of her hopes, dreams and subsequent, stoic acceptance of her fate. It is a story that must be heard and must be shown. A collaborative production between Jim Vimadalal's Backstage Theatre Productions and director Faezeh Jalali's Fats theArts is a commendable attempt in this direction. On a bare stage, a group of actors, bring home Reyhaneh's heart-breaking story. The several young women in the cast, which includes the director, alternatively play Reyhaneh and the various other characters from her life. The three young male actors also shift between multiple roles, most prominently as the vicious perpetrators and the cruel prison officers.
The production relies on the voice and the movement of its actors. In successive scenes that build up the narrative, repetition plays a key role. The device is effective but only up to a point. In the initial stages, the repetitive words and the action significantly keep re-creating the episode when Reyhaneh is betrayed by Sarbandi and he tries to rape her. As the scene of crime becomes a refrain, the terrible outcome of the episode on Reyhaneh's condemned future assumes fateful proportions. At the beginning of the play Sarbandi's son poses the question that will seal Reyhaneh's fate. The scene when purposefully replayed at the end becomes piercing.
Yet halfway through the play, the constant underlining of episodes seems to lose its creative anchor and is kept relevant only because of the ensemble's sheer sincerity. It is at this point that the documentary nature of the enterprise becomes limited because it is bound by what the production has chosen to highlight and present, including the scenes from prison life. Hindi is interspersed with English in one of those more casual overtures that seek to draw parallels between oppressive settings but the great risk here is simplification, as is also evident in dealing with a real-life story from another culture.
The play opened at the NCPA Centrestage festival in November 2015, and has had other shows at the venue's Experimental theatre, which has allowed it to exploit the above stage levels that the space permits to the production's advantage. Many from the cast are students of the Drama School Mumbai, and this production (and hopefully, more shows), is good for their learning. The young ensemble could however gain from a more resonant sound design. The structured scenes without a drop in pace can thus be more effectively highlighted. The humming and singing need more practice and also need to be more fully integrated with the ethos of the piece. These are some of the shortcomings.
Yet these misgivings seem to diminish in the larger goodness of this humane endeavour that first and foremost pays tribute to Reyhaneh's spirit and her words:
I died when I picked up the knife. And since then I pretended to live. I only waited for the day to turn to night and for the night to turn to day. My soul died. My delicate soul died at the age of nineteen. I spent many nights with my nightmares. All these yars were filled with sorrow and pain. I have learnt from these years that death is not a means to end pain. Perhaps it is a new beginning. I Reyhaneh Jabbari, twenty-six years old, am not scared of death. But Reyhaneh, the nineteen year old was.
