Most Christian, Muslim and Jewish children learn the story of Esther at a young age. She is an immigrant woman chosen to marry a Persian king who plans a genocide of her people. Esther is tempted to keep her ethnicity and religion a secret. Revealing her identity would mean discrimination at best, and at worst, death. Eventually, Esther risks her life to prevent what could have been the world’s first Holocaust.
The ancient feminist-political story is coming to life in a modernised musical by Bengaluru-based playwright Shekinah Jacob. Tired of the prevalent armchair morality of our times, Jacob hopes her story about Esther, Queen of Hearts, will inspire audiences to have courage and speak up for what’s right.
“We’ve gone so far back [into the past] as a civilisation that we need to take notes from someone who lived there,” Jacob said. “We’ve got the same amount of crime against women and issues with justice today. Esther says to grab your courage.”
The play debuts at a moment in history when global society shows chilling signs of ignoring lessons from past apartheids, genocides and wars. In August, white supremacy groups in Charlottesville, United States, carried torches and chanted “Jews will not replace us”. Earlier this year, US President Donald Trump tried to ban citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from travelling to America. The Indian government has plans to deport tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees, a stateless Muslim group fleeing violent, mass persecution in Myanmar.
By royal decree
Esther is one of the few heroines of the Abrahamic faiths. Though not explicitly mentioned in the Quran, she has an entire book named after her in the Bible.
As the story goes, Esther was born in the Persian capital as Hadassah, a Jew, and grew up an orphan under her cousin Mordecai’s care sometime in the 5th century BCE. As a teenager, Esther was chosen for her beauty to join the Persian king’s harem. At that time, his empire stretched from Ethiopia to India.
Advised by his cabinet that allowing a woman to dishonour the king would encourage other ladies to rebel against their husbands, Xerxes, the King of Persia, divorced his wife for disobeying him. Xerxes then chose Esther as his new bride, not knowing her Jewish identity.
Despite Persia’s general tolerance of its many conquered cultures, the king’s chief advisor hatches a plot to destroy the Jews. He considers the Jews a hostile people, with too many religious laws conflicting with the government. As a result, he convinces Xerxes to issue a decree that says the only way to keep the kingdom peaceful, is to kill off the Jews.
The Jews fast and pray to their God to save them. Esther knows she may die for approaching the king without a summons, but goes to him anyway and reveals her identity – Xerxes realises that the genocide will include his wife’s death and is furious that he can’t reverse the decree. Instead, he hangs his chief advisor and allows the Jews to arm themselves in defence. The Jews slaughter thousands of Persian soldiers, reversing their fate, and the empire keeps its strength for several kings later, until Alexander the Great conquers Persia.
Modern women
In Jacob’s version, Esther is a young aspiring singer who doesn’t want to become a princess or live in luxury without her career. She views her marriage as the end of her dream, but she is shy in the beginning. She doubts that her personal actions could have much influence on her fate.
“All of us as women don’t see the impact we can have until we own it, either through words or music or dance, for example,” Jacob said. “In the story, Esther thinks, ‘Should I change the plot or play along?’”
Meanwhile, King Xerxes becomes infatuated with Esther and in a boy-meets-girl love story, tries to win her heart with expensive gifts and vacations. He has to learn to love her.
The original Esther’s act of courage was to reveal her Jewish identity to Xerxes. In the modern retelling, Esther struggles to accept that her new position of privilege gives her greater responsibility for her family and people. She resists sacrificing her comfort for what she sees as a family obligation. At one point, Esther believes the only way to survive “a world choking with evil” is to “lift our heads above the muck and carry on as best we can”.
Mordecai teaches Esther that the only way to live is to lay down one’s life for something bigger, and Esther’s girl friend encourages her to believe that she really can be a heroine. One of the pivotal lines of Jacob’s script reads: “If you don’t stand up for what you believe in, you will destroy some part of yourself, crush the life in your soul that you are working so hard to preserve.”
Esther decides not to play along with the domestic role assigned to her by marriage. She changes the plot.
Jacob, too, is willing to change the plot. She trained at Royal Court Theatre workshops in London in 2011, directed her first professional play in 2012, premiered the play Ali J at Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2013 to good reviews, and opened the NCPA Centrestage Festival in Mumbai in 2013. She runs her own theatre company, Open House Productions, from Bengaluru.
Jacob wants to reinvent Indian English musical theater – she said she is yet to encounter a play in the genre that’s resonated with her, because too many English musicals performed in India are Western-oriented. With Queen of Hearts, Jacob wanted to make a musical that looked, sounded and smelled essentially Indian but included the same explosion of cultures Persia had in Esther’s time. The result is a mix of Bollywood, jive, mime and salsa dancing (by Richard David Thaloor) with rock, pop, hip-hop and metal songs by local artists.
Queen of Hearts opened at CMC Auditorium in Vellore on September 2. It will be staged in Bengaluru on October 6 at the Chowdiah Memorial Hall and in Chennai on October 14 at the Museum Theatre.