Telling A Tale: Kitchen Dramas - Dec 6,7 and 8

Telling A Tale: Kitchen Dramas is an original play based on Telling A Tale (2010), a collection of Nepali women's and girls' personal narrations, edited by Archana Thapa. Created with an ensemble of extraordinary young and adult Nepali women, several performing their own life stories and joined by male students and artists, the play reveals how feminine roles take place in public and private places, in our homes and kitchens, and in silence and articulation.

World Premiere
An ensemble creation, directed by Deborah Merola and produced by the professional One World Theatre (OWT), Telling a Tale: Kitchen Dramas will have its World Premiere at the new Theatre Village in Kathmandu, Nepal, on December 6, 7, 8, 2013. OWT is a social justice, intercultural English language Theatre Company in Kathmandu, and already has taken on the issue of sexual harassment in Oleanna by David Mamet, and celebrated strong village women in Nepali Aama.

Kitchen Dramas
From mid-January and February, 2014, different cast members will perform selected stories in more intimate spaces: in family owned art galleries and cafés for an evening of entertainment and dialogue, and in women’s own homes and kitchens followed by Nepali chiyaa and conversation. Women have been talking in their kitchens for centuries, but now the men and teenage children are invited to listen in and learn more about the real lives of their mothers, grandmothers and even great-grandmothers.

“Kick Butt” School Shows
Also during January and February, the girls’ stories will have special performances in local schools, with young women taking a leadership role in arranging and facilitating talk backs with the boys and girls in their classes. Young women, often restricted by limiting social roles and isolated by their own fears and thoughts, can hear about others’ experiences and find solidarity.

Culminating Performance On International Women’s Day
The culmination of the Telling a Tale: Kitchen Dramas project will be a special reprise performance of the entire show on International Women’s Day, Saturday, March 8, 2014, sponsored by Public Affairs of the United States Embassy in Nepal, possibly in cooperation with TEWA, a venerable and highly respected women’s development organization. What a great way to celebrate women’s lives and raised voices!

Impact
If you think Telling a Tale: Kitchen Dramas will be a dutiful but boring evening of theatre, think again. These stories are funny and sad, lively and lyrical, enacted by courageous young students, wives, mothers and artists. Rather than a regarding femininity as a unified, homogeneous form, we celebrate the multiplicity of girls’ and women’s lives and raised voices!