The lights come up, and on stage is Mallika Taneja, bare, still, open, vulnerable, and confrontational as she stares out into the audience. 

In Taneja’s acclaimed solo performance, Be Careful, this opening moment sets the tone for a work that challenges the notion of safety as it’s prescribed and practiced in women’s lives, particularly in city spaces.

In a performance that leads with satire, but delivers a heavy pragmatic punch, this lengthy opening – this protracted moment of nudity, silence, provocation, shock, and vulnerability – both unsettles the audience and endears them to her. By the time Taneja makes her first movement – the slow, gentle act of tying up her hair – it is already a devastating performance. 

From here, she begins to put on clothing. Underwear, shorts, pants, shirts, jackets. One by one, she places items of clothing on her body, while she dialogues with us about the lived realities of women. As she speaks, the clothes become a clock, a medium, an extended metaphor, but also an absurdity, and a great sadness. 

Here, we see her labour under such a collective heaviness. It is too much to hold, to carry. She ends up buried beneath layers of clothing, her breath fogging up the visor of a motorcycle helmet, as if suffocating. 

— David Mann

CREDITS

CONCEPTUALISER & PERFORMER | Mallika Taneja
PRODUCTION MANAGER | Drishti Chawla

Incubated at the Tadpole Repertory as part of their show ‘NDLS’