Based on
Dario Fo's "MEDEA" and on a story by विजयदान देथा Directed By Arvind Gaur
Dayton Daily News
Lushin Dubey shed her identity the moment she stepped onto the stage of Smith Auditorium in Sinclair Community College's Ponitz Center on Saturday night, shrouded herself, turned her back to the audience and began to shake and prance to insistent recorded drumbeats. Mistreatment of women, examined in compelling one-woman show That completed, she turned and began to tell a compelling story about women (and men), from Medea to Rani (the Hindi word for "queen`!), who have been used, betrayed, discarded and held down. During 75 often intense, but also seductive and comic, minutes, she flowed from one character into the next by rearranging a veil, refocusing her gaze, changing the pitch and projection of her voice, adjusting her posture and manipulating faceless puppets that represented male characters. Her one person play, which is staged by New Delhi director Arvind Gaur and was presented here in English by the India Foundation, is called Untitled to reflect the status of many women in the world as nonentities. If that isn't a radical notion in the 21st century United States, Dubey's performance was hard-hitting and straightforward. It deals with the effect on women when men discard one wife for another who may not only be much younger, she may still be a child. She depicts a young wife who takes her own lover rather than be manipulated. Some of the most convincing moments included Dubey's portrayals of men, from a lecherous king who towers over his new teen-aged wife to the shy driver she has to encourage to lift his head to hers. The Hindi-language version of the play has been strongly received in Dubey's native India, where she and a cousin established a children's theater in 1986. She has studied and taught in the U.S., worked on television in India and can be seen in the new Indian film Perfect Husband. Openings*