For years, frameworks like the Bechdel Test have checked the bare minimum for representation, verifying only whether women exist and speak to each other. As conversations around storytelling have evolved, so have the questions these frameworks raise. The Mako Mori Test pushes further, checking whether a woman has a narrative of her own, untethered to a man’s journey, while the Sexy Lamp Test goes sharper still, examining whether she could be replaced by an object without affecting the story. Taken together, these tests shift the focus from mere presence to purpose, forcing us to reconsider not just who appears in the frame but who the story truly belongs to.
Somewhere between the baseline of these tests lies a more urgent question: what happens when women are not just present but essential? Writer-director Navaneeth expands this discourse through his anthology 4 Play 4 Penn. “Why should there be a narrative only from the hero’s perspective? Why can’t it be the life of a woman, from the heroine’s perspective? We wanted to show distinguished characters, the full lives of women, portrayed as the central focus of the entire story,” he explains.
Soodi Thantha Sudar Kodi revisits the divine love of Kothai, reimagining what it might mean for devotion to be questioned, even denied. Drawing from the timeless tale of Andal’s love for Perumal, the narrative begins with Kothai’s unwavering devotion, but shifts its gaze to a quieter, more complex possibility. What if Perumal did not accept her love? What might make a god, burdened with the cosmic duty of protecting worlds and battling asuras, rakshasas, and yakshas, pause and choose one woman’s devotion above all else? By turning this familiar story on its head, the play probes the idea of divine love itself, not as something unquestioned, but as something that can be examined.
Another, Varuviya Vara Maatiya, takes something as every day, and often unspoken, as menstruation, and turns it into a character of its own. “What if periods was a person?” he says. “What would happen if a woman didn’t get a period, and that ‘person’ controls her moods and anxieties?”
There is also Pen’in Vilai Enna where a pen comes alive, speaking back to the society that uses it. “It has a lot of one-liners, a lot of punchlines, but it questions society,” he says. “What if a pen questions things that are not spoken aloud?”
And then there is the most ambitious of the four. “We wanted to project a time loop in theatre,” Navaneeth explains. “Not with technology like in films, but on stage.” Drawing from the language of cinema, like time-bending narratives popularised in Tamil films and even the layered storytelling of Christopher Nolan, the piece attempts something rarely explored in live performance. Titled Mappilai Sir, it follows three women and an older man whose arrival sets off a strange, looping night, almost like a curse they are unable to escape. Each repetition brings them closer to uncovering a way out, turning the loop into both a narrative device and a lived dilemma.
4 Play 4 Penn draws from a legacy of content-driven comedy, inspired by the likes of Crazy Mohan and S Ve Shekher, where humour is not an afterthought, but the vehicle itself. “We wanted to give comedy, which is very deep in terms of understanding,” he says. “The content hits because of the comedy.”
There is also a larger context at play. Chennai’s theatre scene is changing, slowly but surely. Audiences are curious, more open to experimentation, more willing to engage with new forms. “We wanted to cater something new, something fresh, something out of the box,” he says. “Something very cinematic, but still theatre.”
Rs 399. On March 22. Shows at 4 pm and 7 pm. At Medai-The Stage, Alwarpet.
Email: shivani@newindianexpress.com
X: @ShivaniIllakiya
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