Yael Farber’s internationally acclaimed play, Nirbhaya is currently touring India. It is a play based around the personal testimonies of women who have survived sexual violence and an evocation of the Delhi rape case of 16 December 2012. Nirbhaya has played to audiences around the world and met very similar reactions to the global problem of sexual violence: how do we move forward from here?

As part of Nirbhaya’s India tour, the actors and associate partners – the British Council, Oxfam and UN Women are supporting several ‘Way Forward Discussions’, which are open forums for people to share their ideas on we can advance on this issue.

In the ‘Way Forward’ discussion in Delhi, we were joined by great speakers: Huma Masood, UNESCO, Sonali Khan, Breakthrough, Keerti, ActionAid India, Manak Matiyani, Must Bol Campaign and Poorna Jagannathan, actor in Nirbhaya.

During the discussion, some very important points were raised, including:

• The key to this problem is the prevention of violence and being critical of our social norms. Violence against women is accepted and normalised in India.
• We need to reach out to various audiences, we can’t continue to speak to the ‘converted’.
• Violence is about power and subjugating another person. This issue is about the framework of power.
• All genders are responsible for this issue, the onus is not on just women or just men.
• The culture of shame and silence about sexual violence is universal.
• Sexual violence is a cultural and a social development issue.
• The time is right to take action and engage more people in this issue.

But most importantly, the discussion focused on actions that we can take to change attitudes and strengthen our support systems:

• Use popular culture and new media to engage different audiences, especially young people.
• Demand that more budget is allocated to implementing the laws against domestic violence.
• Women are kept without resources and thus unable to acquire power. The government needs to strengthen the social security system to enable women to be independent.
• Translate Nirbhaya into Hindi and play around with different pricing structures so we can take this to more people.
• We need to work at all levels, grass roots to policy, in a decentralised manner with various mediums and forums.

Do you agree? What do you think is the way forward?

Post by: Emer Coyle

Nirbhaya is a tapestry of personal testimonials from women who have survived sexual violence and an evocation of the Delhi rape case of 16 December 2012. The stories are harrowing and are delivered with such intensity, that the anger and strength of the actors reverberates across the stage and into the audience. The play aims to end the global culture of shame and silence around sexual violence and act as a catalyst for engaging more people with this issue that affects one in every three of us.

Nirbhaya premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2013. It won the coveted Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award, the Scotsman Fringe First and the Herald Angel Award for Outstanding New Play.

The play is currently playing to packed out auditoriums across India. Two of the actors, Sapna Bhavnani and Priyanka Bose, took time out to share their thoughts with us.

You have performed this play around the world, are there any differences in the way people react to or speak about this issue?

Priyanka: Yes, we have had the privilege of sharing the play with an international audience and to my surprise, we have been flooded with similar stories of trauma and shame that surrounds people who have experienced sexual violence. So many people express their need to own and accept their experience, and then the struggle to move on.

Sapna: After most of the performances, I get a lot of women wanting to ‘break their silence’ to me. I think this might be because my story is full of the stereotypes by which most societies judge women (the way they dress, how they act and where they go). So many women from all over the world seem to recognise elements of my story in themselves.

When humans witness others breaking down and opening their soul to them, the reaction has been the same. The audience bears witness to the story and in turn we bear witness to theirs.

Do you think theatre can inspire social change? Does theatre have certain qualities that other media may not?

Priyanka: I hope so. The play is not so much about teaching lessons but is a source of inspiration for the survivors of sexual violence and catalyst to get them speaking about their experience. It is a part of human nature to separate ourselves from people who are different and live in different situations. The theatre breaks that barrier of separation. Unlike any other art form the focus of theatre is on the human being, his or her existence, and his or her relationship with society.

Why do you feel it is important to break your silence?

Priyanka: Because staying silent makes me part of the problem. The change came when I wanted and was able to create change by just speaking up about my truth.

Post by: Emer Coyle

Kamila Shamsie, one of our ‘Best of Young British Artists’ launched her latest book, A God in Every Stone in Delhi last week.

She shares her thoughts with us on the complexities of writing about place and identity.

The idea of place has a strong presence throughout my works. I seem to think more about cities than countries, cities are much more likely to have identities than nations and I feel a strong pull to explore them and their spirits. Lahore, for example, is a deeply imagined city surrounded by ancient stories. Karachi is much newer. It is a city of migrants who don’t have monuments or histories reaching back to ancient times. Karachi is a new and restless place and so a writer has to learn to imagine Karachi in order to capture it’s essence. My relationship with London very meaningful but it is a little hazier with England.

There is always a tension between distance and place for writers. Some say that they are able to write their most vivid work about a place when they are in a different country or have just recently returned to a place after a long period of absence. Others would say that you have to truly ‘be’ in that place so as to really capture the nuances of the surroundings. For me, I start writing about one place and then the story spills into other locations. When a writer moves through geographical places, it takes longer to write; especially when you are writing about somewhere you haven’t been before. I have to spend time in my head getting to know a place through research but also my imagination.  Also, when you spend so much time thinking about place and how that affects your characters, you really start to question where you belong.

For me, national identity is something very porous. I have been called both a British writer and a Pakistani writer and I love that. Pakistan has quite negative connotations for some people in the west, and so if the words ‘Pakistani’ and ‘writer’ can sit together through me, then I am very happy.

Post by: Emer Coyle

Photo credit: Sudeep Bhattacharya

Dancer and choreographer Jayachandran Palazhy has watched India’s contemporary dance scene grow and begin to flourish. He shares his thoughts with us on how to shape the future.

I think that Indian dance and music have deep roots because they are linked with religion. That means they have benefitted from religious belief but they are also limited by what is permissible. In the beginning of contemporary work, a lot of people were trying to make work but they didn’t have any specific techniques or skills or modes of creating work. So they were primarily interested in attempting new ideas, contemporary ideas, but their language, structure and approach remained classical and traditional, because they didn’t have the physical techniques or choreographic knowledge or stage technologies…”

Read the full article here

Creative practitioners and researchers from across India and the UK have spent two weeks exploring the theme of Future Cities at UnBox LABS 2014 in Ahmedabad.

The team exchanged of ideas around the application of design principles and innovation to public services and the urban environment. Claire Mookerjee shares her thoughts on the diverse challenges that face cities in both India and the UK.

“The opportunity that presents itself at UnBox Labs amongst such a wealth of talent and expertise is in choosing the most impactful thing to innovate for Indian and UK cities. Both are facing significant challenges, some shared and some very different.

India’s rapid urbanisation lies ahead, most of which will occur in informal or ungoverned ways. UK cities are in need of significant renewal, suffering from over-burdened infrastructure, services and a housing shortage. Indian Cities need to absorb millions of new residents whilst UK city authorities struggle to house everyone even with flats lying empty. There is an agility in response shown by Indian cities whilst UK cities are cumbersome and wasteful. Yet there is a potential humanitarian disaster waiting around the corner for India if basic sanitary infrastructure is not provided for rapidly expanding cities. The challenge for India is to accommodate this expanded urban population in a more resource-efficient way than the West has done.

Informality in the city – as demonstrated by so many of India’s urban practices – brings social intelligence and sophistication. It respects our true nature as social animals. In some respects UK cities are trying to ape these systems, becoming once again mixed-use, with conspicuous production as well as consumption, and allowing empowered entrepreneurialism, sharing economies, material social consciousness and recycling. But of course there is a flip side: inequality and insecurity.

Is there a sweet spot? Through our discussions and explorations at Future Cities Lab, we should strive to develop prototypes and ideas that interact successfully with people and institutions. Perhaps we should have in mind Partha Chaterjee’s take on the Indian post-industrial city: ’like science, cricket, cinema, medicine and even terrorism, this time too our native vernacular genius will corrupt the imported model of the post-industrial city and turn it into an impure, inefficient, but ultimately less malevolent hybrid.’”

The No Boundaries symposium took place last week , supported by Arts Council England and the British Council. It was ‘an open symposium on the role of culture in 21st century society’.

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The discussions focussed around the future of arts and culture, particularly about new ways of working in response to new challenges faced by the arts sector as a whole, such as how to navigate a changing cultural landscape, diversity and trusting your audiences.

What was particularly interesting was a running theme of ‘creating a world where there is ‘no normal’’. I wonder could this ever happen?