Unusual Suspects

Relationships outside the purview of traditional family structures take centre stage in a new play that probes, with humour, different types of companionship

I have been interested in relationships where people are together despite the odds,” director, playwright and actor Faezeh Jalali tells us over the phone. Her play, Strictly Unconventional, premieres this week and will present six stories—all set within the home. It began with Marriage of Convenience, a 15-minute piece Jalali originally wrote for queer media platform Gaysi’s ninth anniversary about a gay man and a polyamorous woman who spend their lives together. 

Others in this collection include the story of a marriage in which the woman is sexually dissatisfied; a straight couple who think they are perfect (“but there cannot be a perfect relationship,” Jalali reminds us); a lesbian couple, with both members dealing with mental health issues; an older ex-pilot married to a woman he has no love for; and a talk show where a thoughtless host ungraciously, intrusively questions a trans couple.

“It is to represent different people and groups, different kinds of pairings and family structures,” says Jalali, who pours experiential knowledge she gleans from her observations of the world and the conversations she has had with people into her writing. “Strictly Unconventional is about looking at society from a point of view that we don’t always keep in mind,” she says. 

Faezeh Jalali

Humour, she believes, is a way to present ideas without moralising; and to question how, for instance, one deals with a partner’s mental health issue, the families we create with the people we love, and the lack of respect and privacy accorded to a trans couple, the likes of which a CisHet pair would never experience. 

“For me, it is easier to represent things by parodying society and making fun of ourselves than by getting into the tragedy of it. It is all tragic, but the tragedy can be explored through comedy,” Jalali offers, adding that while dealing with sensitive subjects undoubtedly involves a degree of risk, her intentions are never to offend. “I am always in support of the underdog,” she says. “The offence is [directed at] the people who are misguiding things.”  

Two out of the six stories in Strictly Unconventional are written in verse. “The verse, the poetry of the text and its rhythm stays with me,” says the writer-director who has engaged extensively with the form in previous works such as Shikhandi: The Story of the In-betweens and Bone of Contention. “It is easier for me to write in verse and form a thought or an idea. The skeletal structure comes much easier to me in verse and then I can expand on it either in prose or verse,” she says, admitting she is drawn by movement and thinks physically rather than intellectually. “There is something innate in rhythm which is part of a life, part of a breath or a heartbeat.”

WHAT: Strictly Unconventional
WHERE: Prithvi Theatre
WHEN: July 7
FOR: Rs 500

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