30 days in september

Above: Design Concept and Inspiration Presentation for "30 Days in September"

 

2018

Set Design  for "30 Days in September" at George Ignatieff Theatre, Toronto

Written by Mahesh Dattani

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Plot Summary

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30 Days in September is a work of contemporary Indian theatre written by Mahesh Dattani. The play revolves around the mother-daughter duo, Mala and Shanta. Mala is a modern Indian girl in her late 20s, a successful self-made woman, and the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of her maternal uncle, Shanta's brother, when she was a little girl. She is open about her disdain for her mother as she blames herself as well as Shanta for never putting an end to the abuse. Shanta is the polar opposite of her daughter, and it is later revealed that she too had been sexually abused by her brother when she was just a girl. A housewife without a husband in picture, Shanta takes care of their apartment, and spends her day locked up in the sanctuary of her puja room, praying to Lord Krishna. Mala, from a young age, took Shanta's prayers as a sign of neglect.

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Design Rationale

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I was interested in maneuvering through the design challenges that the play poses due to the similarity of the plot to Paula Vogel's How I Learned to Drive, whose set I had conceptualized a year ago, as well as the fact that the play's context—set in a middle class Indian home in the early 2000s—was close to home. It was horrifying to see how the lack of moral support and an absorption of the Western culture had resulted in Mala blaming herself for what had happened until finally coming to terms with the assault,. There is this theme of "silencing" or "erasure" that really stood out for me in this play, where Shanta begs for Mala to forget about what happened to her during her childhood and move on, and I wanted to make this evident.

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The playwright suggests for the set to be separated into four different areas: one for the therapist's office, second area for Shanta and Mala's living room, the third area for Shanta's puja room, and the fourth area a miscellaneous one where boxes could be reconfigured to stand for different pieces of furniture. I decided to experiment by going in a different direction.

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As a tribute to all the Gujarati Nataks that I watched while growing up, I decided to embrace realism and combining it with my love for symbolism. I decided to use the majority of the stage to create an almost-realistic looking middle-class living room, painted in turmeric yellows, chilli powder reds, and black. The backdrop of the living room, however, makes the theme of "erasure" evident. This is a white wall with  arcticles from Mala's childhood—such as her clothes, shoes, backpack, school books, and food—glued on to it and painted white, as if to give the sense that someone was either moving out, or has tried really hard to hide these things in plain sight. The living room is the place where the abuse is talked about most often, and so it made sense for this space to have a haunting quality to it. In contrast, the puja room is a bright affair of reds and yellows, covered by a scrim so that it is only visible when hit with a light from behind it, to give the sense that this is the only place where life truly happens in this household.

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The rest of the stage is reserved for wheeling in realistic props, such as a bed for a split scene, in order for them to match with the rest of the design. Instead of creating a formalized space for the therapist's office, the actress playing Mala would walk up close to the edge of the stage and address the audience with her dialogues.

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The story is without an ounce of doubt dark, tragic, and heartbreaking. The audience feels angry at the Uncle on Mala's behalf. Yet the everyday nature of the set design aims to ground this story and in the present moment to send a message that we live in an age where abuse is, unfortunately, normalized. This could be anybody's story.

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Below  is a to-scale Set Design Plan