To Kill A Mockingbird: Closer today than ever before

Why a performance of the US classic To Kill A Mockingbird in Bengaluru needed a "purely fictitious" disclaimer.

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THE disclaimer, read loudly before the start of the play, clarifying that the characters and events of the play are purely fictitious, did more to set To Kill A Mockingbird in context in Bengaluru, October 2023 than anything else may have.

Because, of course, why should such a disclaimer even be necessary for the performance of a US classic? The dangers of any public event in present-day India that hints at social inequality and injustice, hatred and bigotry, became manifest before the first line of the play.

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee was presented to a full house on October 28 at the Chowdiah Hall in Bengaluru. Directed by Tahera, the play had Kenneth Gonsalves in the role of Atticus Finch, and Nishitha Sudershan as his daughter, Scout, with Sonali Dutta, Prithvi Selvaraj, Syed Saad and Sai Jayant among the other characters.

Calling on the audience to be members of a jury to reflect on what they would be witnessing, the play brought ample opportunity for them to consider what is happening off-stage as well.

Initial difficulties in getting used to the speech pattern of the characters in a Depression-era town from US's deep South settled down after the first ten minutes and one was better able to appreciate the dawning of new awareness and insights in the mind of Scout Finch.

At the beginning, she shows mild disappointment, even exasperation, with her father, Atticus, whose most sterling quality is described by his friend and neighbour Miss Maudie very simply as, "Atticus Finch is the same in his house as he is on the public streets."

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As the play goes on, however, she is better able to understand that it is this steadfastness to the values he holds that distinguish her father from many of his fellow inhabitants in the town of Maycomb.

Not only is Atticus different from others because he is standing up in court to defend a black man who has been charged of rape, he is also different because he pays no heed to the manner in which this particular action of his is criticised by the majority of people in his social milieu.

As he expresses memorably in one of the best-known quotes: "The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."

We live in a time when laws curtailing individual liberty are routinely passed by a brute majority. A time when questioning the right or wrong, just or unjust impact of public policy has become nearly impossible under blanket levels of propaganda and trolling on social media.

Holding on to the call and values of one's individual conscience were never more difficult, or more necessary, than they are today.

As societies across the world get increasingly polarised, liberal positions come under increased questioning, and 'woke' becomes a pejorative word in some circles, it felt rewarding to be reminded of what really constitutes a liberal way of thinking.

Atticus' defence of Tim Robinson is not confined to the courtroom alone. He has to spend a night guarding the prison cell where Tom is incarcerated, because of the real possibility of Tim getting lynched.

When the lynch mob arrives, the man who leads it is Cunningham, who has once been a recipient of Atticus' kindness. It is Scout, who, by bringing that memory to Cunningham, and reminding him of his own child, averts any ugly violence.

But Atticus, who has been inches away from getting hurt, refuses to condemn Cunningham, because, as he says, "A mob is always made up of people, no matter what, Mr Cunningham was part of a mob last night, but he was still a man."

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In the twenty-first century, it is a struggle for us to remember our common humanity with the members of mobs, and sometimes it is downright impossible. These are times when Atticus' advice to Scout appears impractical, when he says, "If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."

With more talkers than listeners, much more information and very little wisdom, we are stretched today to retain our appreciation of another's point of view.

Moreover, the awareness that even the criminal justice system is weighed against some people in a lopsided fashion is as sharply felt today as it was by Atticus in the play.

"The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any colour of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box," he says.

Perhaps the warm and enthusiastic response to this amateur theatre production in Bengaluru was because so many in the audience had connections to the cast and crew.

But perhaps it went deeper than that— several hundred people were happy to have found a space in which to consider good and evil, right and wrong— and every telling line of dialogue spoken by Kenneth Gonsalves as Atticus Finch found its mark.