According to the United Nations, one out of every three women world-wide have at some stage in their lives been victims of rape, molestation or abuse, actor-producer-director Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal reminded Parsiana over coffee at her apartment three weeks after her show The Vagina Monologues (TVM) entered its third decade. Five shows at the Prithvi Theatre on April 1 and 2, 2023, one of which Parsiana was invited to, marked the milestone. In India, with "so many reported and unreported dowry deaths, the statistics are grimmer,” she stated.
"This is a historic benchmark for any play in India,” exulted the veteran stage and film actor. "We are also opening later this year with a translation in a vernacular language… We will be the only country to have staged TVM in three languages, English, Hindi and one more.”
Top: Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal; clockwise from above left: poster; V (Eve Ensler); Dr Kaizaad Kotwal;
Dilnaz Irani. Varsha Agnihotri, Mody-Kotwal, Swati Das
TVM is an "episodic” play written in 1996 by American playwright, author, performer and activist Eve Ensler, who now calls herself "V.” The play explores consensual and non-consensual sexual experiences, body image, genital mutilation, direct and indirect encounters with reproduction, vaginal care and similar issues through the eyes of women of various ages, races and sexualities. The New York Times in 2006 called the play "probably the most important piece of political theater of the last decade.” The play has been "Indianized” with Parsi, Muslim and Hindu characters for performance in-country. "We had to get Ensler’s prior permission. Once that was done we cannot change anything,” stated the septuagenarian. Parsiana pointed out a monologue performed by Mody-Kotwal about the sexual experiences of an elderly Parsi woman in a Morris Minor car with her buddy "Pesi Pastakia.” "Yes that was one of the changes that we made, after approval.”
Over the last two decades, TVM’s "over 1,000 shows” have been staged in multiple cities in India and Sri Lanka. The high point for the actor came about in 2019 when she directed 11 American actresses in Gainsville, near Atlanta, USA. "That one show raised USD 30,000 for rape victims…It was surreal,” she exulted. Another memorable performance was a show planned for the executives of the Godrej group in time for a milestone anniversary of that establishment in 2019, she narrated.
She recalled yet another high for her. While performing at the Palladium in the Phoenix Mills compound in Bombay, "one woman in the audience fainted…She was sobbing… We stopped the production and took her to the greenroom... There she narrated her story…She had been witness to the rape of her 10-year-old sister… ‘In a way the episode brought closure to my experience,’ she told us.”
The current show stars, in addition to Mody-Kotwal, actresses Dilnaz Irani, Varsha Agnihotri and Swati Das. "The beauty of TVM is that you can perform it with three or four actresses or 11, as we did in the USA,” she mentioned. "We can never do it as a one-actor play. Ensler had done that initially when she opened it in the USA. We cannot even do a piece on its own outside of the entire play,” as extracts are not permitted. The producer fondly remembered Dolly Thakore "who has done most of our shows.” She could not perform in these shows for health reasons.
"No one has ever called our show vulgar,” she stated, recalling the time they were to perform in Madras and the police commissioner ordered a ban on the performance. "He gave his permission later.”
Mody-Kotwal and her son filmmaker and educator Dr Kaizaad Kotwal were both felicitated with the Karmaveer Puraskar Maharatna award in November 2019. The duo received this award for their contribution to women’s empowerment and for their work towards combating violence against women and girls through their Make-A-Difference Foundation (see "Doubly rewarded,” Events and Personalities, Parsiana, December 21, 2019). Dedicated to "helping abused women, across all strata... to find a way out of violence,” the Foundation works "with a variety of projects and programs in urban schools and colleges, alongside economically disenfranchised women in underprivileged areas of Bombay.”