The Husbands
by Sharmila Chauhan
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February - March 2014
UK Tour, Co-Production with Pentabus Theatre
It’s Aya’s wedding day. Her third. Her current two husbands aren’t too fussed. In a society in which there are few women, that’s just what happens. But as the household prepares for the wedding feast, a stranger arrives – one who threatens to challenge everything they believe in.
Against a backdrop of modern rural India, Sharmila Chauhan wove an extraordinary tale of love and wonder in an exuberant and challenging piece of theatre.
Writer Sharmila Chauhan
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Screenwriter, playwright and prose writer, Sharmila’s work is often a transgressive meditation on love, sex and the diasporic experience. Her plays including The Husbands, Born Again/Purnajanam and 10 Women all place women centre stage and explore power and femininity. Sharmila has had two short films (Girl Like You, Oysters) produced and written two features. Her […]
About the writer‘In parts of India, polyandry has become a necessity. Gendercide, as a consequence of the ancient preference for boys, the modern desire for smaller families and the increasing availability of ultrasound techniques to detect the gender of a baby still in the womb means that the number of females is declining. I wrote The Husbands both as a response to this but also as an exploration of the complexity of love, intimacy and trust between one woman and three men where gender differences and expectations are amplified. In a sense, this play is as much a warning as an allegory for the fate of women in The West today.’
Sharmila Chauhan
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Toured to
Plymouth Drum 12-15 February
Birmingham mac 22 February
Leicester Curve 25 February -1 March
Shrewsbury Theatre Severn 4 March
Wolverhampton Arena 5 March
Tewkesbury Roses Theatre 6 March
Ludlow Assembly Rooms 7 March
London Soho Theatre 11-23 March
BSL Signed Performance 19 March