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Rani Moorthy in her one woman show, Shades of Brown
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Shades of Brown@Waterside Arts Centre, Sale, 31 October 8pm
9/10/2008
PLAYWRIGHT Rani Moorthy’s comic, bold and thought provoking one-woman show about skin colour, returns for its second UK tour.
Shades of Brown sees charismatic performer Rani Moorthy, with her celebrated mix of warm and powerful story telling, transforming into funny and poignant characters who share an ironic kinship through the one thing they cannot hide or hide from - their skin.
Coming out of the shadows, an albino Zulu questions what Mandela would do as she faces superstition and prejudice in post apartheid South Africa where she is still the ‘wrong’ colour. On the brink of reversing her condition, an Asian scientist afflicted by vitiligo questions how brown she is prepared to go. On the eve of her big day a skin-bleaching Indian bride vents anger at Shilpa Shetty as she questions the damage done to her own skin in pursuit of beauty.
As money and time is poured into tanning or bleaching, the play explores how skin colour prejudice is more than an issue of Black/White racism. As an indicator of identity, ethnicity and status within ones own community, Rani uses both painful truths and ironic black humour to explore the deep-rooted contradictions and trauma involved when an individual has too much or too little skin pigment. Each sympathetic and vibrant monologue portrays the pain of rejection when skin colour is questioned, and reveals the challenge that an individual’s unique colour may present to there own community.
Shades of Brown is in part inspired by the challenges Rani faced growing up yearning for the light skin so valued by her Tamil culture. When she was five years old, her grandmother told her "You are dark skinned like me. What bad luck, you better be good at something".
From Hindu myths to the Karma Sutra almost all literature and mythology of her upbringing referred to the beauty of fair skin. Dark skinned people were never mentioned or shown as oppressed, ostracised or demonised. Living in the West for the last ten years Rani saw the irony that those with naturally light (white) skin want brown skin, while in Asia and Africa women still bleach their skin.
Whatever shade of brown you are or want to be, this play is guaranteed to get under the skin.
Shades of Brown is on tour from 18 October to 30 November 2007.
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