The Tristan Bates Theatre is a rather non-descript building near Leicester Square looking like an office. Like Asia House no tickets are required but akin to a private party one’s names are listed. As usual we were early and killed some time in the bar before the performance.
The theatre is probably the smallest I have ever attended and seated perhaps 100 people. The set was rather spartan, with just a table and chairs, and a piano. As we entered the theatre the cast were already in situ. As soon as the audience were settled the play or the reading began. The performance was described as a “reading”, with the actors reading from scripts and it was rather similar to a rehearsal.
Cornelia Calling is based on the life of Cornelia Sorabji, an Indian Christian Parsee from Bombay who is believed to be the first woman to read law at Oxford in the 1890s. While she read law she did not receive a degree because she was a woman. After “graduation” Cornelia split her time between India and the UK, and was often unable to practise law because of her gender.
Much of the reading revolves around Cornelia’s meetings with her friend Mary while students at Somerville College in Oxford, and at times during their lives. Like Cornelia Mary is also an outsider, from a Geordie working class family. Through their conversations we learn about Cornelia’s background, her motivations in studying law and her life and career after Oxford. There were two other actors who played various roles including Hindu women in purdah who had been exploited by male advisers and looking to Cornelia’s mother for advice, and Gandhi, who had met with Cornelia, as well as other roles including the narrator.
Most of Cornelia’s life is presented as a struggle, and fighting against the odds. Even within India she was often regarded with suspicion for coming from a Christian background and for having a mother from a low-caste. On her return to India Cornelia is forced to work as an informal legal adviser unable, despite some influential supporters, to be allowed to appear as an advocate in her own right. However, Cornelia was later allowed to practise after legislation was passed in India to enable women to become barristers.
One of the main set-pieces of the reading is a meeting between Cornelia and Gandhi in 1931 in London. The conversation on stage was recently replicated in The Telegraph. The two had many elements in common, British educated, and trained in the law, with both unable to practice at times. Cornelia comes across as a devoted Anglophile opposed to full Indian independence but supportive of dominion status, similar to that of Canada and Australia.
Cornelia castigates Gandhi for being unable to restrain his supporters from engaging in violence despite his non-violent ethos. She also criticises Gandhi for presuming he represents all Indian opinion; she suggests he only represents the educated and upper classes. While the independence movement and the Indian upper classes encompassed a wide range of viewpoints I doubt if many would have opposed full independence as Cornelia appears to.
In one of their conversations Mary asks Cornelia “Are you English or Indian?” The mere fact the question was asked indicates some level of ambiguity. One is reminded that both Gandhi and Nehru aped Western habits certainly in terms of clothes in their formative years, and Gandhi’s austere lifestyle was heavily influenced by radical vegetarians in the UK when he came to study for the Bar. Indeed Nehru referred to himself as the “last English ruler of India” perhaps not anticipating that his daughter Indira would become Prime Minister, and the language of the Nehru household was English and not Hindi. One cannot now imagine an Indian leader making Nehru’s “tryst with destiny” speech in English.
Cornelia’s relationships receive rather cursory treatment, although her friend Mary does propose a lesbian relationship which Cornelia rejects. There is a suggestion of a relationship with a married lawyer in India, although it is not clear whether the man is Indian or British.
Cornelia’s life is indeed one that warrants exploration principally because of her almost continual battles with male dominated and perhaps misogynistic institutions and professions. At almost every stage in her life there are barriers to be overcome: getting to university in Bombay, a place at Oxford, her putative relationship with a lawyer in Allahabad, and being prevented from practicing. Some of these situations and incidents could have been an entire play in their own right particularly the encounter with Gandhi.
My own feeling was that Cornelia’s life could have been better portrayed more narrowly and that the format tried to cover too much ground thus giving the audience little of substance. We had relatively little of Cornelia’s motivations, in particular in taking up the law although there was a focus on unrepresented Hindu women, her seeming lack of feminism, and her Anglophilia. Cornelia’s passions did not manifest themselves explicitly. I also found the relationship with and the background of the fictional Mary rather contrived although I do understand that the conversations were necessary for purposes of exposition. I wonder how many women from working class backgrounds would have made it to Oxford in the 1890s.
Overall a production deserving of a wider audience albeit with some reservations.
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110522/jsp/7days/story_14013867.jsp - Cornelia’s meeting with Gandhi
www.kalitheatre.co.uk
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