A few people watch theatre, the vast majority don’t. Theatre in India by and large spans a lowly spectrum from slapstick to amateur, with the odd professional production in between. The lack of money is used as an easy excuse for sleep-inducing plays.

But paucity of funds is an alibi as far too many plays lack imagination and effort. Street theatre has shown, time and time again, that an actor standing at a street corner with a story to tell and the skill to tell it, often makes for the most riveting act.

As someone who tries to follow the theatre scene, I find that on an average only three out of ten plays impress. One forgets, or worse still, doesn’t wish to remember the rest.

But good plays do dot the scene. They reinforce the purpose of the art and the importance of shared experiences. Such plays reel one into the theatre, repeatedly, in the hope of that one moving, perhaps, even transcendental experience.

Nirbhaya: Breaking the Silence arrived in India on a juggernaut laden with sponsors and awards. But the play rose from humbler beginnings: an actor who heard about the Delhi gang rape and felt something rupture within, a director who believes in the power of testimonial theatre and a crowdfunded project on Kickstarter.

Talking about the power of theatre where actors recount and re-enact their own stories, South African theatre director Yael Farber said, “There is nothing more powerful than witnessing a person claim the events of their life in public and in a highly compelling and crafted way.”

Of late, a crop of brave productions have dealt with issues of misogyny and patriarchy: from Kalki Koechlin’s Truths of Womanhood to Neelam Mansingh’s The Licence to Mallika Taneja’s Thoda Dhyan Se .

But Nirbhaya showed that a good idea is just the start of a process, that a play becomes a success only when well crafted. It was graphic without being sensational; moving without being manipulative and overwhelming without being suffocating.

At the end of Nirbhaya , many in the audience crumpled into tears, others stayed behind and revealed their own experiences; thus claiming the events of their lives which they had hidden deep within.

Cinema and literature always come with the barriers of the screen and page, but with theatre, the act of sharing and witnessing are immediate and unfiltered.

As Farber proved, there is nothing more powerful.

Assistant Editor

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