The Amazing Flabby-Breasted Virgin & Other Sordid Tales is a playful, irreverent digital performance. This performance is part of an educational arts project on systemic issues in both medicine and education today. It plays with the myths and magical thinking that surround and define the non- masculine, non-heterosexual body. Inspired by the writings of Coordinator Dr Suchitra Dalvie it poses surreal and satirical questions about how women's bodies are taught, perceived and practiced within medical education in the urban Indian context. A textbook of forensic medicine in standard use across India today defines the breasts of a virginal woman as 'hemispherical, firm, plump and elastic' while that of a deflorate woman as 'enlarged and flabby'.
What is this body, and how does one operate it? How do we inherit the stories of the non-masculine body? How do we employ these stories as truth?
FBV has had a long journey. It was birthed two years ago, and has since taken multiple iterations. It survived a global pandemic, and has now emerged stronger as a hybrid performance intervention. In its present form, FBV uses what is available and real to us in the changed world of live performance—film, performance, and an interactive website. The performative archive on an interactive website was created in a hybrid team—offline actors and online designers and artists. In our future dreams for FBV we seek to reimagine the show as an offline, live performance.
About KathaSiyah
KathaSiyah is a feminist, performance collective centered around the ethics of care and a deliberate awareness of our own position in relation to the work we make. KathaSiyah is a group for artists chasing an inquiry, and for Flabby-Breasted Virgin, we wanted to delve into the practices and complexities of violations that surround sexual and reproductive health rights in urban India.
The script was developed under the mentorship of Abhishek Majumdar at The Bhasha Centre Playwriting Programme 2019-20.
You can buy your tickets for the upcoming shows on 11th and 13th February here.