THEATER > PLAYS

SCRIPTS, ANALYSES, & RECORDINGS

The following scripts, analyses, and youtubes give a sense of Richa Nagar’s collaborative work through theater in Hindi/Hindustani, Urdu, and Awadhi.

ऋचा नागर द्वारा रंगमंच के क्षेत्र में हिंदी, उर्दू, और अवधी में किये हुए सामूहिक काम से सम्बद्ध कुछ साक्षात्कार, नाट्य-रूपांतर, नाट्य-आलेख, नाट्य-मंचन, और शोध :

In 2014, Richa Nagar collaborated with the Mumbai-based actor and director, Tarun Kumar, to organize through PARAKH, an intensive political theater workshop in the Yari Road neighborhood of Mumbai. The six-month long workshop brought together 20 people to grapple with issues of caste, class, gender, and religion through a focus on Hindi and Urdu fiction and culminated in Hansa, Karo Puratan Baat, based on a theatrical adaptation and collective reinterpretation of Premchand’s last short story, “Kafan” (The Shroud) and instilling it with the poetic and political sensibilities of Kabir’s work. The workshop participants were migrants to Mumbai from rural Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Karnataka and Gujarat, with half of them identifying as Savarna, and the other half identifying as Dalit, Dalit Muslim, OBC (other backward caste), or Adivasi. Although some were seeking careers in Mumbai’s film industry, others were providing domestic help in the homes of film and television artists. The participants worked through continuous embodied improvisations of the story based on their own experiences so that the play could embody Dalit critiques of the story, “Kafan.” For detailed discussion and analysis of the play and its making, see Part 3 of Hungry Translations: Relearning the World Through Radical Vulnerability.


SEE THE FINAL PERFORMANCE, RECORDED IN MUMBAI ON DEC 27, 2014