Project Darling and the search for saucy sirens of yore

The Kannada play, ‘Project Darling’, pays homage to women theatre artistes and those who choose to live life on their own terms

We all know a sassy, smart talking, hard to please, tough as nails lady — the favourite aunt, elder cousin or family friend who is far “too cool” to care about being politically correct. Well, the theatre has had its fair share them and the Kannada play, Project Darling throws them into the limelight once again.

The character of Khanavali Chenni, whose every utterance was loaded with clever innuendoes and double entendres, was popular in Kannada theatre. In Project Darling, director and playwright Sharanya Ramprakash looks at the role of these women in the face of unrelenting misogyny.

According to Sharanya, the play came out of a research project for the India Foundation for the Arts. “As modern day women, we still find life suffocating; I wondered how and what feisty personalities did to subvert the system in those days?” Project Darling is about female sexuality at the crossroads of culture and censorship, and how these women circumvented strictures.

“I wanted to trace my professional ancestry as a theatre person and I toured Karnataka meeting vamps, villains and comedians of the stage. This play is constructed out of that research and includes bytes, photos and personal stories of women of the stage before me.”

Sharanya also explored what women were allowed to say (or not) on stage and their play on words, puns and hidden meanings. “The way words were used questions notions of vulgarity. However, it can’t be denied that over the years, the dialogues for characters such as Khanavali Chenni have made a literary contribution to Kannada, though it often isn’t acknowledged.”

During the course of her research, Sharanya met with theatre artistes from Hubli, Dharwad, Ranibennhur, Gubbi, Tumkur, Mysore and Bengaluru. “The oldest was 88-year-old R Manjulamma from the Sri Nataka Mandali. That troupe comprised a group of women who essayed male roles, dressing up as men their whole lives. And as a company, they delivered quite a few hit productions.”

The plot of Project Darling revolves around five modern day stage actors’ bid to locate Khanavali Chenni. “This iconic character is proud of herself, shining outside the dichotomy of society-approved, gender based roles of wife, sister, mother and daughter. She belongs only to herself.”