Episode 5: The Web of Revolution
Bhama is a history teacher. Her students hate history. So, she takes them to a museum. Except the museum is a very weird place. It has a chorus of curators explaining every exhibit and automatons that recite history. See footnotes for further reading on the historical events mentioned here.
Scene opens to a new room in the museum. Lights slowly come in. The Curator Chorus is already in place.
Dance of the Strings
The dancers enter in ones and twos
They have string wrapped around the waist
The dance involves moves that have them unwrapping the string and tying it across the stage like a web
The way the strings are tied should be strong enough to allow the girls to weave through them
The strings should be stretchy as well like those elastic dancy bands
The web is set and the dancers leave or stay, depending
Enter Bhama and the girls. They struggle to walk through the web.
Girl 4
What is all this string?
Girl 2
I feel like a fly stuck in a spider’s web
Curator Chorus
We are all flies
Stuck in the web
Of History
Girl 3
That is very encouraging, thank you…
Girl 5
If this museum wasn’t so interesting, I would definitely think those women are weird.
Girl 1
Those women are weird! Look how they talk.
Bhama
You can call them weird, all artist are little weird.
Girl 2
I thought they were historians. This is a history museum, isn’t it?
Bhama
History is art. That is why you study Arts to learn history. Arts and humanities.
Curator Chorus
Arts are human
And
Humans are ART
But that may be
Difficult for you
To understand
Now
Do you know
When you are?
Girl 1
Don’t you mean, where we are?
Curator Chorus
No, we do indeed mean
When
Time is not a
Straight Line
It is zigzags
And
Jagged Edges
A jumble
A shamble
Of Strings
Within strings
Interconnected with
Woven into
Strings
Each string is alive
Each string is
Dead
And when you touch
One string here
You can feel the
Vibration
In another string there
So every when
Is a where
And every where
Is a why
And that is why
We built this room
It is a Revolution
Girl 3
A revolution? I see nothing revolving.
Girl 4
Not revolution like the Earth revolves around the sun, silly!
Girl 1
Revolution like, French, Russian, American – like a change, a radical change!
Girl 2
Oh, you mean those things were lots of people get angry and kill lots of other people?
Girl 5
Usually the very rich, the nobility and the king and queen…
Girl 2
And then no one knows what to do, so there is a dark age…
Girl 4
And then someone comes and becomes king again…
Girl 1
Or America comes and establishes “democracy”. What, my mum told me.
Girl 3
So, this is a room of epic, historical fails?
Girl 2
Just like those older spiderman movies…
Girl 5
Oh, that’s why the theme is a web…
Bhama
You girls chatter too much and think too little. Not every revolution fail.
Girl 3
But that’s what we studied…
Girl 1
You mean mugged up…
Girl 3
Whatever, I mean they say things like liberty and equality
Girl 4
And fraternity, and justice
Girl 5
And equality
Girl 3
I already said that. My point is that nothing changes.
Girl 4
Hundred years ago, we were complaining about the British. Today we are complaining about our government. At least our parents are.
Girl 2
Yes, we just complain about the school and the teachers.
Girl 1
Not you, Miss Bhama, we like you. You got us to this museum.
Girl 5
But, the thing is we just keep shifting the blame and the cycle keeps going…
Bhama
So depressing for people so young like you! Not every revolution fail. Not everyone blame. Some people do. And lots of things change. For better.
Curator Chorus
The Teacher is Right!
Some people wait
Some people make
That is what this web is about
Small revolutions
Happen everyday
Butterfly wings
That dream up storms
And small beginnings
That change the world
You just don’t hear about it
But trust us
Pull a string and
You will know
Our automatons are here to tell
These untold stories
Enter Automatons, in a machine ballet. They twirl and do a sequence of movements repeatedly till one of the girls pulls a string. Again their storytelling is supported by visuals on the screen. The music keeps playing in the background. We can also have a bucket of images like polaroids that the automatons or the kids can attach to the string with clips
Girl 2
Well, here goes nothing…
She pulls the first string. We hear a loud echo-y twang. The automatons react to it like they are being wound up.
Automatons
The Matchgirl Strike
Everyone believed that their hands were small, so this work was best for them.
Small hands. Strong hands. Crafty hands.
Once up on a time, girls and women – thousands – worked in the factories of London.
Making matches
The matchgirls worked 16 to 20 hours a day, with no breaks and hardly any pay
And the white phosphorus from all those matches
Slowly dissolved their bones…
But that was not the end
The Matchgirls walked out
And refused to work till their demands were met
More money, less time and safety from the white devil!
The met the bosses, they met the parliament
And started the first women-led strike in the world
One of the people to help them was Annie Beasant
The independence Annie saw in them years later would make her speak out for independence in India with the Home Rule League
The automatons continue their repetitive movement
Girl 3 pulls a string. Another twang. Another automaton steps out.
Automatons
The Green Belt Movement
Once upon a time there was a girl who planted millions of trees. Her name was Wangari. Wangari grew up in Kenya in a place full of birds and animals and lots of green trees. But the trees were cut down, first by the British colonizers and then by the Government to make way for roads and farmland. As Wangari grew and started teaching at University, rural women would complain to her…
“We have to go further and further for wood for fuel”
“The streams are drying up”
“The crops are failing”
Wangari realized, “We need to bring the forest back
The women asked, “How many trees should we plant?”
“A few million”, she said
“Are you crazy? We can’t even count that high!”
“Then we plant more trees than we can count”
They started planting seeds in cans and when the seeds grew up to be saplings, they put them in the ground and started again with new seeds.
First it was just a few women and everyone made fun of them. But soon these few became thousands. The crazy project became the Green Belt Movement, a green revolution in Africa. Today the Green Belt revolution has planted 40 million trees, not just in Kenya, but across the world.
Girl 4 pulls a string. Another twang.
Automatons
Parivartan
Once upon a time, actually just 15 years ago… women got tired of being thirsty all day and waiting for the cover of night… to go to the toilet. So they decided to do something about it. The got women from the slums in Ahmedabad together, trained them in sanitation system planning.
“But ben, we need money also no, to do this”
“Then we need to learn how to save some”
And so the women opened bank accounts and started saving money like they never had before.
“But ben, this is not enough, where will we get the rest.”
“We’ll just have to ask the big people.”
“You mean beg from rich people?”
“No, I mean, demand from the government”
And so, these women also trained in getting funds from the Government.
And in 3 years, 46 community-based organizations for sanitation started in 895 slums. They trained more than 13,000 women and installed toilets in nearly 90,000 households.
Girl 5 pulls a string. Another twang.
Automatons
The Women’s March
In 2017, women across the world came together
To organize the biggest protest in history
Against gender inequality
In
New York
Washington
Belfast
Johannesburg
Indonesia
Rome
Paris
In
Bengaluru
Delhi
Pune
Chennai
Mumbai
Kolkata
Hyderabad
Lucknow
Puducherry
Silchar
Nagpur
Ahmedabad
Jaipur
Bhopal
Udaipur
Kochi
Karimganj
All performers leave their personas and together sing the 2017 MILCK song of the Women’s March: “Can’t keep Quiet”
This is one of the scenes from the massive collaborative project with my alma mater, where we worked with personal and people's histories and created a large-scale production. Not all scenes translate to standalone work, so only this scene is available as a download. This is a project I hope to continue with kids and so more scenes may be uploaded soon.
Further reading:
Images used in post:
Photo of matchgirls participating in a strike against Bryant & May, London 1888. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Women’s March on Versailles, 1789. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Iranian Women Day's protests against Hijab, 1979. Source: Wikimedia Commons
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