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Theater: SAMMY! - Reading sample


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CAST

MAHATMA

MOHAN

and a versatile ensemble of three men and a woman.
If possible, the ensemble could include more men and women.

The ensemble will depict:

1. Actor / Dada Abdulla / Aenoch Aasvogel / Kallenbach / O'Dwyer / Mountbatten
2. Railway Official / 1st Man / Polak / ADC / Shukla / Clancy / Jinnah / Godse
3. 2nd Man / Medic / Smuts / Jawaharlal Nehru / Viceroy / Pahwa
4. Mrs. Alexander / Kasturba / Sarojini Naidu


ACT ONE

Scene 1

On the periphery of the acting area is a rack of costumes, a dressing table and a folding screen behind which actors can change. To one side is a platform. On the platform: Mahatma Gandhi, staff in hand, clad in a loin-cloth. In silhouette.

MAHATMA: I am a shadow. (As the lights come up) The shadow of an actor.

He chuckles and turns as though to descend but the spot on him fades and he is frozen into another Mahatma attitude. Another actor enters, moving quickly to the rack of costumes.

ACTOR: Me too. I'm also all that. Shadow. Actor. Everything. (Donning a padded long-coat and getting on with his preparations) I'm part of the ensemble that will depict the other characters. That's how it is in life, isn't it? One great monumental figure (Nods in the direction of the Mahatma) looms out of events as though he came readymade for history but all the little fellows and fillies who may have shaped him are remembered only incidentally - as if they took life just for, and by, that brief interaction! I'm not complaining. Who am I to play Iago to his Othello? (At the dressing table, he gets into make-up) I mean, there are lead roles and lead roles. Not all of us can have the big, meaty parts. Some have to live off crumbs. But that makes us versatile, adaptable. (Sticking on a fulsome moustache and clamping a red fez cap on his head) The great thing about being an actor is that you cross all barriers and boundaries. You break through colour, creed, kithship, kinship - the whole jing-bang shoot. You have a chance to get inside other people, feel their skin from within. You understand the conflicts and suffering of each person, (Gives a small laugh) even the aches in their bones. I kid you not. (Walks with a changed, limping gait) For instance, Dada Abdulla could feel the arthritis beginning to clutch at his right knee. (Taps it) Right here. And I can tell you it's bloody painful! (He now speaks in a gruffer voice and a less sophisticated accent) Of course, the biggest change in Dada Abdulla's life in South Africa was brought about, unexpectedly, by the juvenile behaviour of that young fellow Mohan. (Lowering his voice as though sharing a confidentiality) You see, I had employed him as my lawyer to iron out some trouble I was having with a cousin brother of mine. Ah, there you are, you see - I just said cousin brother. That is why I had to get myself a lawyer from India. An Indian understands these things. Here in South Africa, my company's white lawyers - like Harry Escombe - would say, "Yes, yes, your cousin." And cut out the word brother. That means Tyeb could be my cousin sister. He could be a woman. This is ridiculous. My whole approach to the civil suit would be different if I was fighting a girl. So I would say, No, no, Tyeb is a man. He is my brother, almost like a twin. We grew up together. He is a twin cousin brother. But they don't understand the agony of this family problem. Cultural differences, you see. So I had to get this johnny as we say here - this Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi - all the way from India. But he gave me another kind of headache.

Mohan - a young man, in a spruce frock-coat and small, tight turban - enters in a huff as though to cross the stage. The 'Actor', now playing Dada Abdulla, limps after him.

ABDULLA: Wait! You must understand, Mohan. Mohan!

MOHAN: (Stops) What's there to understand, Dada Abdulla? That magistrate was picking on me. Didn't you see the way he kept staring at me? And then he asks me to remove my 'head-dress'! What's wrong with wearing a turban in court? Nobody objects in India.

ABDULLA: This is not India, Mohan. (Shakes his head. Kindly) Mohanbhai. (Then pointing vigorously to the ground) Durban, Natal, South Africa. It's different here. Why can't you understand that?

MOHAN: (Thinks. Then sharply) He didn't object to your fez.

ABDULLA: That magistrate is a fool. He took me for an Arab trader but thought that you were a mere labourer.

MOHAN: He took you for an Arab trader? But you're an Indian trader.

ABDULLA: Exactly. And it would make little difference if I was Arab or Indian - except that this (He taps the fez) indicates that I'm a trader. And a trader has a little more money and a little more status than a mere labourer. So he chose to pick on you.

MOHAN: How did he conclude I was a labourer? And why should he bully me for that?

ABDULLA: You see, you don't know the first thing about these people. They live by generalities and swear by race. Race signifies everything to them. Anyone who wears a fez is an Arab or a Turk. And all Arabs are traders. A brown man who doesn't wear a fez is an Indian, and every Indian is a beast of burden, a coolie. (Indicating the fez) This is my passport to slightly better treatment, my disguise if you wish. Of course, as a Muslim I am entitled to wear it but … (Shrugs) You have to use your wits to survive. Now take the Parsees, they call themselves Persians.

MOHAN: Which makes them- ?

ABDULLA: Clerks.

MOHAN: (Laughs) Well, I don't want to provoke unnecessary insults. I'll wear a hat instead.

ABDULLA: In the name of Allah, no! A hat would make you an Indian Christian waiter.

MOHAN: There's no harm in being mistaken for-

ABDULLA: A Christian? Good heavens, man. Look around you. These are all Christians behaving so abominably. As for Indian Christians here, they don't associate with us. I tell you, Jesus would have had a hard time in South Africa, with his coloured skin and his desert robes. I tell you, we don't care to have anything to do with these Indian Christians. They're monkeys, flunkeys, waiters. What's so funny? Why're you laughing?

MOHAN: The way prejudice begets prejudice! We must reclaim the Indian Christians as our own. They're educated. We must stand together in the struggle.

ABDULLA: What struggle?

MOHAN: Why, the struggle against prejudice naturally.

ABDULLA: Mohan, Mohanbhai. South Africa is bigger than you. And bigger than that is the British Empire, to which we are all slaves. When we are unequal in our own country, how can we expect equal treatment in another colony?

MOHAN: Hm. You may have a point. (Thinks, then) Nevertheless, I believe there's a great deal of good in the British and we can learn by their example.

ABDULLA: Mohanbhai, you may try to emulate them, but then they only give you the respect that's due to a performing chimpanzee in a zoo.

MOHAN: I'm afraid you've got a whole menagerie in me, Dada Abdulla. Something of a white elephant too.

ABDULLA: What d'you mean?

MOHAN:The fact is, I've just set up practice as a barrister. I have no experience in the courts. I get tongue-tied before an audience. I handled one case in India before coming here for yours. In that case, I stood up in court but the words wouldn't come. I had to return the fees to the client.

ABDULLA: Good heavens! And I'm suing my cousin brother for forty thousand pounds! May Allah look kindly on my misfortune.

Quick fade out

ACT TWO

Scene 8

Sarojini and Mohan. She is arguing with him.

SAROJINI: Bapu, do you not see the enormity of the indignities being heaped on us?

MOHAN: I do. I am deeply pained.

SAROJINI: How can you remain calm when the country is in turmoil?

MOHAN: More reason why I must remain calm.

SAROJINI:Then help me, Bapu. I'm in anguish and ready to explode. Just look at what happened at Jallianwallah Bagh in Amritsar.

MOHAN: If Plassey laid the foundation of the British Empire, Amritsar has shaken it.

SAROJINI: Do you really think so? Then you agree!

MOHAN: (Nods) My own faith in the British government is shaken. I never expected this. It is shocking.

SAROJINI: By order of the military authorities, nearly four hundred bodies were left to rot in the heat for three days. And the injured lay among them, crying for a drop of water. What kind of monster is this General Dyer? And now he's having Indians flogged and made to crawl down the street where a Miss Sherwood was chased by some people because she knocked someone down with her bicycle. These things happen. The situation is volatile.

MOHAN: We must find a way to assert our independence and gain our freedom. They have made us dependent on them for everything - even food, clothing, medicines. We must grow our own food, spin our own cloth-

SAROJINI: Spin our own cloth? Bapu, you're talking in riddles! The country is aflame with the desire for action. The public is reacting against the arrogance of misused power. No wonder there is rioting in various parts of the country. Just give the clarion call and the whole nation will rise-

MOHAN: No, no, we must control ourselves. I have made a Himalayan blunder in thinking the people could practise civil disobedience without proper guidance in non-violence. I am suspending satyagraha immediately and undertaking a fast for three days as penance for my mistake. Go and inform the others that the movement is suspended indefinitely till we have learnt to improve ourselves.

She goes. A quick spot on Jawahar seated at a small bare table, writing a letter.

JAWAHAR: Oh no, Bapu! I'm writing to you from jail, on behalf of Father and myself, to say you can't stop now. If you do, it makes all our sacrifices useless. The movement is gathering momentum. This is the time to push ahead.

MOHAN: Not for me a freedom won on the wings of violence. And what freedom is that? For what we seek is freedom from violence.

Jawahar rushes out of his spot into that of Mohan's. Jawahar's spot fades.

JAWAHAR: My first thought on being released from prison was to come to you, Gandhiji. We've got to talk. We've got to understand each other. Sometimes you leave me completely bewildered.

MOHAN: Ah, Jawaharlal. Come, sit by me. What bewilders you?

JAWAHAR: (Sitting down quickly) The way you think and speak. Now take the deeds of this government.

MOHAN: This government is satanic.

JAWAHAR: There you are - satanic! What a word to use! You bring religious, indeed biblical, terminology into a description or denunciation of a horrendous aspect of our political reality.

MOHAN: Do I embarrass you by using one simple word instead of twenty intellectually-acceptable ones?

JAWAHAR: Well, yes. The fact of the matter is you use emotionally loaded words from the vocabulary of ethics.

MOHAN: Shouldn't ethics enter politics and indeed govern it?

JAWAHAR: But where I would say an act was wrong or bad, you would carry it into another dimension by calling it evil.

MOHAN: Was the massacre at Jallianwallah Bagh not evil?

JAWAHAR: You see what I mean? We have to confront a social reality in a socially realistic way. But you carry it into the epic dimension by turning it into a struggle between good and evil.

MOHAN: Are we not engaged in an epic struggle?

JAWAHAR: Every day?

MOHAN: Every day. Even in our lives.

JAWAHAR: I have great difficulty explaining your methods. They seem more like morals than means for achieving a goal. Now just take your insistence on non-violence. People are impatient. They have been saying for a long time that we should take up arms against the British-

MOHAN: And I have been saying for an equally long time that they are wrong. That approach will only result in worsening our bondage. Guns and bombs spread terror, and terrorists are answered with more terror. It is a vicious cycle that only creates fundamentalists and fanatics.

JAWAHAR: But these are not right wing people I am talking about. They say look at the teachings of Marx, Lenin. See what happened in Soviet Russia - an armed revolution. I tell them, if we had the weapons we would use them but, since we don't, we might as well be non-violent.

MOHAN: No, no, no! Even if we had recourse to weapons, we must be non-violent. A fully-armed man is very likely to be at heart a coward. Possession of arms implies an element of fear, if not cowardice. But non-violence is unadulterated fearlessness.

JAWAHAR: But to fight the British, don't we need- ?

MOHAN: We are not fighting the British. It is not the British people who are ruling India; it is modern civilization with its exploitative system of railways, telegraphs, telephones and almost every invention which has been claimed to be a triumph. The people of Europe, before they were touched by this so-called modern civilization, had much in common with the people of the East. Even now Europeans like Kallenbach who break through the materialism of modern civilization and are not touched by its crassness are far better able to mix with Indians. Today, unfortunately, there is no such thing left as Western or European civilization; it is only modern civilization which is purely material. Among the British there are many men and women who value and practise the true Christian ethic. These are our friends and comrades in the struggle. People such as C.F.Andrews, West, Polak and many thousands like them. Whether British or Indian, we are together in this fight against the system. Behind the guns of imperialism and colonialism is the system.

JAWAHAR: The Marxists call it capitalism.

MOHAN: Marxism is itself materialistic and therefore part of the trap. The real freedom struggle is to be free of materialism.

JAWAHAR: Frankly, Bapu, your views seem to me to be completely unreal.

MOHAN: (Smiles) Then why do you follow me?

JAWAHAR: Because your idealism moves me and I see it means no harm to anyone and I haven't the heart to disillusion you. And there seems to be nothing better on the horizon.

MOHAN: (Laughs) At least you're truthful. That's the first qualification for a satyagrahi.

JAWAHAR: And what is the second?

MOHAN: Non-violence. I'm told you have a terrible temper.

JAWAHAR: Oh, just tantrums. I tend to be impatient. Can't abide fools.

MOHAN: Well, you'll have to put up with me.

They laugh. The lights fade.