Attend a courtroom drama where audience are invited to play the role of the jury

Actors at rehearsals for The Woman on TrialThe judiciary by definition is a justicedelivery mechanism that relies entirely on facts and evidence to reach a conclusion The moral standing of a judge or jury member is supposed to play no part in a trial But is this always the case Do the keepers of the law adhere unwaveringly to rulebooks Or are they like other mere mortals prone to letting societal drawbacks like class divides and gender bias colour their judgmentThese are the questions that lie at the heart of Ayn Rands 1933 play Night of January 16th Its a courtroom drama in which Karen Andre the mistress of a dubious businessman named Bjorn Faulkner stands trial for his murder And throughout the course of the plot line Andres identity as a woman works against her Shes standing trial for murder and not the choice she made in having an affair with a married man and coconspiring with him in shady monetary deals But its nonetheless used to paint her as a murderess by those characters who fail to recognise that at least from a moral standpoint both Faulkner and Andre stood on the same shaky ground Except that being a man the former is viewed far more favourably in the eyes of a hypocritical societyTo some extent the play is feminist in nature says Laura Mishra who is directing an Indian adaptation called The Woman on Trial which will be staged later this week The witnesses would have been more lenient if a man had been standing trial instead There is the character of a housekeeper for instance who judges the woman despite Faulkner being equally involved in whatever happened For this housekeeper the man is a bechara while the woman is the bch for leading him on she addsMishra also says that ultimately any legal system is a manmade one that is not completely infallible Here people decide the fate of other human beings and there is a sense of prejudice that often comes in the way of a fair judgment The set for the play is thus completely white where the aim is to give you the idea that the law is supposed to be pure It is supposed to be untouched But when we walk through it we walk with dirty feet that make it murky she revealsThe director adds that her adaptation retains the original ending where audience members are invited to play the role of the jury This was a novel idea that Rand had had because over the years the judgment that people have meted out has been a live barometer of the moral tropes prevalent in the society of the day Its indicated for example what sort of gender roles people in previous decades ascribed to men and women But have attitudes changed much from 1933 to 2018 Is society today more open in general to view the two sexes from an equal footingLaura MishraWell thats a question that the Mumbai audience will partly answer for itself after its called upon to decide on Andres fate when The Woman on Trial is staged at a Bandra venueON February 3 8 pm onwardsAT St Andrews Auditorium Bandra WestCALL 9322225157COST Rs 200 to Rs 700Catch up on all the latest Mumbai National and International news hereDownload the new midday Android and iOS apps to get updates on all the latest and trending stories on the go