‘Agnes of God’ Opens to Applause in Mumbai as Govt Rules Out Ban
Maharashtra government declined to stall staging of the play “Agnes of God”, opposed by Catholic Secular Forum.
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Agnes of God opened at the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) in Mumbai to loud cheers and applause on Monday evening. The play was caught up in a whirlwind of protests last week after the Catholic church demanded that the play be banned on the grounds that it hurts the sentiments of the Christian community. But it was staged after all as the Maharashtra government refused to intervene in its staging.
After the premiere went off without any disruption, director Kaizaad Kotwal took the stage after the curtains fell and admitted that the previous week was the “most surreal” one of his life, reported The Indian Express.
It’s as if I went to sleep on Sunday night and since Monday morning, I’ve been thrown into some sort of combination of a Kafka novel and Clockwork Orange…some bizarre world where a few fringe elements decided to use this play as their means to earn a few minutes of attention, and attempt some form of blackmail and extortion.
— Kaizaad Kotwal to The Indian Express
Monday night’s premiere was a small victory for Kotwal and his Poor-Box Productions but it he is likely to face a long battle with censorship. The play tells the story of a nun who delivers a still-born child.
Since September 28, the Catholic Secular Forum (CSF) and Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India (CBCI) had been seeking to ban the production, saying it’s a “misrepresentation” of Christian beliefs. And it was only on Monday morning that the theatre group got some respite, when Kotwal was allowed to go ahead with the show during a meeting with Maharashtra Minister of Minority Affairs Eknath Khadse and CSF’s Joseph Dias.
The director was, however, asked to hand over a recording of the play to the CSF for viewing to decide on whether it wished to pursue its complaint.