‘Employee Dharma Handbook’: The Scourge of Caste Discrimination Showcased in a Play by TheaterWorks
- In playwright Geetha Reddy’s portrayal, the underpinnings of a caste-based discrimination lawsuit against Cisco a few years back are not subtle.
TheatreWorks Silicon Valley kicked off Season 56 with the world premiere of “The Employee Dharma Handbook” in the second week of July at the Lucie Stern Theater in Palo Alto.
TheatreWorks is an artistic community committed to dramatic and musical theatre of outstanding professional quality. Embracing the creation of new works, the reinvigoration of the classics, and the arts education of new generations, their work exemplifies Silicon Valley’s values of inclusion and innovation while providing a sense of place and community.
The San Francisco Bay Area is the prototype of an evolving America of ever-increasing diversity.
In the “Employee Dharma Handbook,” Bay Area-based Indian American playwright Geetha Reddy explores what happens when simmering ancient practices including caste based differences lead to disrupt carefully calibrated contemporary workplace attempts to eliminate unconscious bias, combatting gender, racial, and other discrimination. The underpinnings of a caste-based discrimination lawsuit against Cisco a few years back are not subtle.
Two Cisco supervisors, Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella, were accused in the department’s lawsuit of discriminating and harassing an employee on the basis of caste — a division of people based on birth or descent. That case was dismissed by an order of the Santa Clara Superior County Court. The employee belonged to the Dalit community, a group in the bottom rung of the caste hierarchy which originated in India. The California Civil Rights Department has voluntarily dismissed its case alleging caste discrimination against two Cisco engineers, while still keeping alive its litigation against the Silicon Valley tech giant.
At its World Premiere, unspoken forces of caste discrimination are set at an aerospace company, as tensions simmering amongst its Indian immigrant employees threaten to derail an upcoming rocket launch.
Set at a Silicon Valley aerospace company, HR executive Val (played by Kathryn Smith-McGlynn) investigates a potential staffing issue amongst the lead engineers, Leela, (played by Megan Suri), a brilliant engineer who is wrongfully superseded for a deserved promotion; Basu (played by Kunal Dudheker) who is her undeserving yet clear hearted colleague who is promoted and the mission manager Krish (played by Kapil Talwalkar) who is the kingpin in promoting Basu over Leela (played by Kapil Talwalkar) clearly discriminating against Leela because she is from a low caste. Both Krish and Basu belong to the Brahmin caste. CJ, the CEO, is played by Ranjita Chakravarty. Both Megan and Ranjita have acted in Netflix’s Never Have I Ever.
Val, suspecting sexism, instead encounters simmering tensions of ancient origins, aka caste nepotism amongst the company’s Indian immigrant employees, bubbling over and threatening to derail the company’s upcoming rocket launch.
Center Theatre Group’s Brindell & Milton Gottlieb Artistic Director Snehal Desai has directed this gripping investigation of identity, nepotism, and desire.
Top image by Kevin Berne.
Shalini Kathuria Narang is a freelance journalist and a software professional. She is also a poet, and her poems have been published in several anthologies including “Starry Nights: Poetry of Diaspora in Silicon Valley” and “Pixie Dust and All Things Magical.” She is a monthly contributor to Masticadores USA and has been published by Spillwords Press and San Antonio Press.