Radical Flight: India's Feminist Street Theatre Wrought Social Catharsis

Deepti Mehrotra’s riveting new book delves into the welded world of street theatre and women's activism.

Walking Out, Speaking Up, Feminist Street Theatre in India, just published by Zubaan, takes a deep dive into the world of protest, theatre and gender activism. 

(Photo: Altered by Vibhushita Sing/The Quint)

It’s easy to forget how easily bride-burning, 'dowry deaths,' and the oppression of (and extortion from) young brides took place just half-a-century ago. But social conscientisation, stringent laws, judicial firmness, and women’s support groups had already come about by about halfway through the 1980s.

A recent book has brought out the bold and creative roles that feminist street theatre played to cause that change, starting from 1979 with Om Swaha and Ehsaas, and building through the 80s. They were so impactful that, when women’s resource group Jagori called for street play scripts in 1986, at least 80 of the scripts were modelled on Om Swaha.

This is one of the amazing nuggets of information in Deepti Priya Mehrotra’s riveting book, Walking Out, Speaking Up, Feminist Street Theatre in India, just published by Zubaan. The book is not just informative but insightful. It brings alive the processes and iterations through which feminist street theatre subtly but substantially changed social milieus and individual lives—and, one might even say, contemporary history.

The Message and the Medium

This book is as much about street theatre as it is about India’s feminist movement and activism, which "aligned aesthetic and political radicalisms" to "dramatise the new, aware woman" who "redefined sexual assault as a crime of power."

The annotated and sourced paperback is simultaneously academic and a popular read. Not just that, it transports the reader vicariously into the processes of conceptualising, acting, and viewing street theatre, allowing her to sit around the circle, or even feel a part of the circle from which feminist voices movingly resounded.

Further, the book describes and analyses the dynamics of the message animating the medium and then a movement.

"Arriving at a public spot, the actors would demarcate a circular performance space. Women have long been familiar with circles of confinement, a `lakshman rekha ’beyond which they cannot step, …but here women were reinventing circles as spaces of freedom, from where they could step in and out."

The Semantics of Inside-Outside

This book is to academic literature what street theatre is to proscenium theatre; even its plethora of footnotes draw one in conversationally. It narrates, discusses, raises questions, even leaves loose ends bare where, for instance, the author can only identify three of the four actors in a photograph, or some of those who attended a workshop. It comes across as living, authentic, inclusive, real.

Over time, this will be a valuable archival resource—a partly autobiographical account which captures the essence of performances that were often organically ad-libbed in different places. It records where, when, and how various plays, resources, and support groups came about, and by whom.

Mehrotra was among the early participants in feminist street theatre, and has remained involved in one way or another for four-and-a-half decades—making this book the ultimate participant observer work.

So, it came as a shock to see her say that feminist activism reached its zenith in the 1980s, and has struggled in the wake of liberalisation. "Street theatre in general has transitioned to being more instrumental, a conveyor of messages rather than a space of discovery and transformation," she holds.

To those of us who were involved in early feminist street theatre, it gives a sense that we did something worthwhile when the time was ripe—but also disappointment at the decreased pace of empowerment since.

In keeping with the insider-outsider concept of street theatre, and the participant observer frame of this book, one who was part of the process feels able to describe and perhaps evoke rather than just review the book.

For, having participated in the re-invention of Om Swaha in 1979, and several performances, I vividly recall the tremendous energy and talents of powerful women (including the extraordinarily talented Maya Rao and activists Lolly Ramdas, Sharda Behn, Gouri Choudhary, Ein Lall, and Mallika Virdi and Jyotika Virdi) flowing organically into the creation and presentations of drama which, "in this mode, is born three-dimensional" —a play which, as this book makes clear, had a seminal impact on society, and several individuals.

At a college at which a woman had been stabbed after she turned down a male student, "the (Ehsaas) play set into motion a process of learning and gradual training" and "the whole idea of 'gender sensitisation' began to dawn upon people."

Performed where they were least expected, street plays sometimes drew buried emotions to the surface. The author notes her shock at discovering through 'broken narratives' of women viewers in Lajpat Nagar that, "beneath robust practicality festered grief, their suffering stretching across the decades (since Partition)."

Making Space

In tune with its insider-outsider nature, the book brings alive changes in actors too, "even if it was just a quiet girl learning to sing and speak loudly, or to find her way home alone." Mehrotra notes about her father that “personal change happens in unpredictable ways; as one woman changes, people close to her might start changing too.”

"A special kind of creativity, as well as feminist perspectives, spurred a unique internal development. Meaningful, pithy dialogue melded with music, dance, colour and humour—elements drawing from popular travelling theatres, films, and women’s traditional sub-cultures...Especially those who were rural or first-generation urbanites carried within themselves rich repertoires of song, dance and expressive enactment, learnt and practiced during festivals, marriages, and humdrum tasks like planting saplings or pounding rice."

Deepti Mehrotra writes in 'Walking Out, Speaking Up, Feminist Street Theatre in India'

Celebrating the trust exercises and other dynamics of workshops, she says these "engaged the whole person: physical, intellectual, emotional. Bodies habitually held tense and tight, stretched, enjoying the release of energy. Chronic shoulder pain dissolved, someone who works in the fields felt calf muscles relax. Defences dropped, boundaries became fluid, channels opened up for wider communication."

The "dynamics of sharing, mirroring, and empathy was essential to this theatre", which "was liberating. It was hard work, heart’s work, shot through with pleasure. In the warm atmosphere of a theatre workshop, tensions were released amidst talking, tears, laughter, buffoonery, the sharing of confidences."

After such exercises had "encouraged playfulness, spontaneity and camaraderie," actors were able to innovate in order to bring trauma alive to passing audiences, to draw out pain as they drew in passers-by.

So, for example, "the woman was lying there and the men threw the ghunghru to each other over her body" to symbolise gang rape—and the scene moved audiences.

Inspired by the Meira Paibis of Manipur in a later phase, the book records that more than one woman innovated to portray nakedness.

An Organic Journey into Activism

Mehrotra notes that "plays written by Rasheed Jahan and Ismat Chugtai in and beyond the 1930s sharply delineated women’s subjectivities,” and that women’s concerns were staged in the ‘50s by Sheila Bhatia in Delhi and Vijaya Mehta, Dina Pathak, and Shanta Gandhi in Mumbai. But, by the end of the 70s, “feminist street theatre was very much about dissent: sharply political, anti-establishment, with social commentary, struggle and the element of solidarity. Plays critiqued prevailing structures, and emphasised the possibility of rebuilding lives along with creating democratic spaces."

The medium was effective. The book notes that street theatre evoked a lot of discussion when performed by an activist group in Bundelkhand, whereas "hardly anyone would show up" when the group had tried to discuss the same issues earlier.

From theatre to discussion to activism was an organic process for some. Others were driven by personal grief. After 18-year-old Nur Jahan was burnt to death in a Delhi resettlement colony, her mother Shahjahan Begum’s life changed.

"I threw aside my burqa, stepped out, leaving my younger children with the older ones. My husband would shut me out of the house, but there was no way I could return to my old life. In 1986, when Shakti Shalini, the shelter home, opened, Gouri Choudhary and others asked me to join. I ran Shakti Shalini for twenty-five years. What happened to my daughter must not happen to anyone else."

The feminist street theatre of the late 1970s, 80s and beyond left a lasting impact on society, and even touched the soul of the nation. This book evocatively documents it, and is a fitting tribute to the proce

(The writer is the author of ‘The Story of Kashmir’ and ‘The Generation of Rage in Kashmir’. He can be reached at @david_devadas. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)