Kul seems to have a double personality. We see the first when she is with Ant and there she behaves like any other teenager while when she is with her father she acts differently. She sounds more much more mature than her age. I think this is because she fells more confident and powerful with Ant.
Kul has a passion for boxing. Her inspiration is Mohammed Ali the famous boxer. Through out the play she imagines that he is there and gives her advice. Her dream is to become a famous boxer like her inspiration, however she has to fight against racism and sexism. Her father use to be a boxer but does not approve of her boxing as he believes that it shall just shatter her dreams.
Kul wants to prove that she can do whatever she wants and that it doesn’t matter who or what you are.
The best scenes in the play are the scenes between Ali and Kul
Ali is her conscience and not real. I think this is effective as Kul tells Ali everything that she is thinking. At the start of the play Ali is supporting her but towards the end just before the fight in the championships Ali turns his back on her and tells her that women should not be boxing in the first place which is ironic as Ali’s own daughter is a professional boxer. Kul yells at Ali and tells him to go away. She left to cope on her alone. He disappears from her imagination and she is left all alone. She panics and is afraid of loosing. Ali and the father are similar as they both don’t want her to do boxing. This also shows what the mass society think of female boxers.
Kul confided in Ali that she wanted to change her name. He tells her that this was just changing who she was. This was in way stripping her identify and security.
The second scene that I thought was very effective was with Ant and Kul. Here she takes out her aggressiveness out on Ant .Ant asks for his five pounds that he lent Kul. Kul starts hitting Ant and tells him that she will not give him the money unless he fights for it. Ant is pushed to the limits and almost hits Kul. I think this scene is effective because the tension builds up when she is hitting him, Kul was getting louder and louder. We discover a lot about Ant’s character in this scene. He is shown to be a quite boy who can’t stand up for himself. Kul appears in a bad light because although she sticks up for Ant in times of need, she goes and bullies him.
I think Kul gave the best performance for a number of reasons. She has the ability to transform herself completely as the part requires. In front of her father she is the quite passive girl while when she is in the company of Ant she is a bossy and confident girl. Kul’s tone did not stay the same throughout the play. It changed depending on which situation she was in. She did this very well. She had different emotions to tackle for example puberty .It was interesting to see how she approached different problems. There were no sign of weakness in her performance. Her facial expressions when she was boxing made her just like a boxer in a ring. We really believed that she actually boxing for real. As she goes into slow motion it looks as if someone is punching her.
There was no lighting on stage .The play had only one set. This set was mainly made of a boxing ring. This is where most of the action happened, but it also had Kul’s room, house and Ant’s house. The main part the boxing ring was blue the same colour the boxing match “Rumble in the Jungle”. Mohammed Ali won this game spectacularly. In Ant’s area the floor is covered with coloured pixels suggesting a vivid imagination. Also this represents Ant s obsession with the T.V. In Kul’s house the floor has red and yellow Squares. These are symbolic colours in the Sikh religion. She also had pictures of Ali the boxer in her room. He is her idol. Another part of the set was a garland this was meant to represent a picture of the mother.
There was some sound involved in this play. Mostly a punch bag getting hit and Indian music. For more boxing atmosphere there is boxing commentary going on at the background.
The themes that were developed in the play were racism, sexism, puberty and relationships .The main message was that you can do whatever you wanted to do with determination and hard work.
By Nada Rahmouni 10Q
