Playfully serious

Two solo acts by Obie-award winner Martin Moran are coming to Bengaluru and New Delhi after a rousing reception in Mumbai

People walked into Mumbai's National Centre for the Performing Arts earlier this week expecting a heavy monologue about child sexual abuse, having been told that the performance would be by a man who had faced sexual abuse as a schoolboy. But they were surprised to see an informally dressed man in his 50s, with twinkling eyes. The atmosphere in the theatre instantly eased up, the audience seemed more relaxed and also curious about what would unfold.

Though The Tricky Part is an extremely personal account of actor Martin Moran, who, was sexually abused as a 12-year-old by a counsellor at summer camp, it is never uncomfortably intense. The Obie Award-winning act is peppered with humour and heartwarming anecdotes, as audiences in Mumbai found out to their delight. "I think the reception in Mumbai was great. The rooms were packed," says Moran. "I always try to begin with humour as a way of making us comfortable together and easing the way for some difficult questions." Moran will be performing The Tricky Part and its sequel All the Rage in Bengaluru and Delhi soon. The former explores the issue of child sexual abuse in the context of its impact on the child's psyche and ways of moving on. "The play elicited a lot of cheers from the audience. I have also got a lot of 'thank you' letters," says Moran.

The play concludes with a revelation of forgiveness for Moran himself. "As a child, one feels a great deal of guilt and complicity in the act. I realised that what happened was just a part of who I was and needed to forgive myself," he says. However, after watching The Tricky Part, a play that premiered in New York in 2004, a lot of people wrote to Moran that while the solo act was beautiful and complex, they were wondering where the rage was. "That really disturbed a lot of people. It was from this that the second play, All the Rage, was born. "It set out to answer the question about where rage and compassion meet," says Moran. It was staged in 2013 and won the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show.

What has the audience raving is the informal tone of the play. Moran always makes a point of initiating a conversation with the audience: "Did you go to a Catholic school?" "Were you taught by a crazy nun?" At that time the members of the audience might wonder at the randomness of the questions, but everything adds up at the end. "It is only in the last 20 or 30 minutes that you realise that you are watching a play," says Moran. The plays' director, Seth Barrish, had a lot to do with this treatment. "Since this is non-fiction work, putting on any kind of pretence would have been counter-productive," says Barrish. "It had to be written in a way that seems like Moran is speaking off the cuff, spontaneously." Sometimes Moran would write something and bring it to the rehearsals, but Barrish would pronounce it as too literary. "I would ask him to narrate the piece to me in his own words. Behaviourally too, I made sure that everything that seemed forced was left behind," says Barrish.

After performing the show countless times across the world, has Moran changed the way he thinks or feels about the incident? "The deepest change took place when I set out to tell a personal story. It was very challenging in the beginning. But I realised that the deeper the personal story is, it ceases to be just about that person and becomes a story about 'us'. It is no longer about what happened to Martin but how do we as human beings feel about this. At the end of the day, it is all about the joy of making theatre," says Moran.

The Tricky Part and All the Rage will be staged at Ranga Shankara in Bengaluru between November 11 and 13. The plays will then reach New Delhi, where they will be performed at the India Habitat Centre on November 15 and 16