“But I chose theatre because it had space for collective and democratic work. As writer, translator and academic, Mangai was spoilt for choice. But it was not until 1990, after attending the Expressions workshop organised by Majlis, an organisation that works with law and culture, that she recognised theatre as her calling. Mangai started dabbling in theatre in the 1980s along with Chennai Kalai Kuzhu and AIDWA’s Sakthi Kalai Kuzhu. She told them about how Maniyamma had given her a ride on her bicycle when she was a child, and then she handed over a small donation to the group. Six people played the role: anyone wearing a red shawl was Maniyamma.” A day after the play, an elderly woman turned up. “We finally chose to bring in her spirit, which resides in each of us.

Mangai says she was not convinced about bringing Maniyamma as a character into the play. Also, how she equipped herself to handle threats by learning to ride a bicycle and by practising silambam. “We took six phases from the story, essentially around Maniyamma’s rebellion against Brahminical widowhood, her shift towards Gandhian ideology, and her doubts about socio-political questions which led her to Left politics. She fondly recalls staging a play on the iconic Manalur Maniyamma, the privileged caste widow, who became a Communist, at an AIDWA conference in Nagapattinam.

Mangai’s journey in theatre is filled with extraordinary moments. Theatre lets you be free with your body, to own it.” Extraordinary moments When it is a trans body or a queer body, it becomes an even bigger statement. In theatre, the socially constructed images around the body are broken. We live in a society where the woman’s body is consistently subjected to shame or treated as an object of gaze. “It also had an uncanny connection to dancer Chandralekha’s statement about finding the spine in dance,” says Mangai.įor Mangai, who turns 60 and completes 35 years in theatre this year, the stage is also about ‘physical liberation’. The woman told Mangai after the workshop: “I never knew that my back could be so straight.” It was a moment of revelation. In her first theatre workshop in Tirunelveli, thespian and scholar Mangai met a person she least expected to see: a young woman who rolled beedis for a living.

Mangai jeeva