Female infanticide, domestic violence, and dowry deaths were important issues that the women’s movement in India vehemently addressed in the late 1970s and 1980s. Women’s organisations held protest rallies, demonstrations, public meetings, signature campaigns, and household surveys and submitted memorandums to compel authorities to intervene. But these were not their only tools. Agitprop tools such as street theatre were used to mobilise women and to ensure their demands were heard. Deepti Priya Mehrotra’s book Walking Out, Speaking Up gives us a glimpse of how street theatre groups employed this tool to drive inclusive societal shifts.

Walking Out presents the theatrical interventions of autonomous women’s groups such as Stree Sangharsh, Karnika, and Saheli, which were led by women who wanted change and who spoke up using theatre as a medium. Written in a docu-memoir style, this book incorporates citations from experts and activists, and features compelling summaries of plays, along with extracts from scripts and song lyrics. Mehrotra managed to trace the scripts of 23 plays while writing this book; some are discussed in detail and accompanied by photographs of performances. She writes that these artefacts had remained hidden from history since little energy could be spared for record-keeping in the bustle of everyday activism. Walking Out is an effort to recover those scripts, stories, and histories.

In that sense, it is similar to recent political memoirs such as Aruna Roy’s The Personal is Political: An Activist’s Memoir (2024) and Brinda Karat’s An Education for Rita: A Memoir, 1975-1985 (2024). While personal in form, they are fundamentally about collective movements. The narrative is woven between the “we” and the “I”, with the collective and the movement taking centre stage.

Writing about the late 1970s, Mehrotra observes: “There was a deep need to articulate, and no forum to do so: no recognition of gender at that time, in syllabi or curricula.” Street theatre thus became a vital space and medium for that articulation. Reading Walking Out, we understand how street theatre gave form to complex ongoing debates by “visibilising issues”, thereby aiding participants in addressing them. It was a powerful tool because the audience did not merely consume the play for entertainment; rather, each performance was intended to provoke thought and action.

Plays for the masses

Crucially, these plays were inspired by actual incidents of violence against women. The dowry-related murders of Nur Jahan, Tarvinder Kaur, and Kanchan Mala in Delhi, who were burnt to death by their in-laws, led to the anti-dowry campaign play Om Swaha in 1980. The book reports that this play was performed at protest sites as also by the national-level Joint Anti-Dowry Front, which included women’s organisations like the All India Democratic Women’s Association, the National Federation of Indian Women, and the YWCA.

It was a period when theatre groups travelled extensively, performing for crowds along the way. The Kerala Shastra Sahitya Parishad pioneered this model for science popularisation; Samudaya in Karnataka spearheaded kala jathas against state oppression and societal inequalities, and, later, Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti successfully used the form for the total literary campaign.

Walking Out records how the NGO Stree Mukti Sanghatana organised “Stree-Purush Samanta Yatras” (Journeys for Gender Equality) across districts in Maharashtra in 1983. Its founder, Jyoti Mhapsekar, recalls how their play Mulgi Zali Ho (A Girl is Born) was performed around 3,000 times and at least by 10 different groups. Mulgi Zali Ho addressed the difficult and unfair life choices that women must make, such as between marriage and a job. Neela, the protagonist, has A Doll’s House moment and breaks the shackles of oppressive structures by walking out of them.

Ehsaas (Awareness) is another play that Mehrotra writes about at length. It emerged from a 1979 theatre workshop organised by the journal Manushi at Miranda House College, Delhi University. It dramatised the participants’ shared experiences of power dynamics in the family, in public spaces, and within relationships. Mehrotra notes that it not only gave women the confidence to speak up about their experiences but also became an integral part of campaigns against sexual harassment, flagging incidents of public indecency and obscenity in the vicinity of women’s colleges. Ehsaas was also adapted by students of St. Stephen’s College after a large-scale assault on women on campus during Holi in 1981.

Several plays mentioned in the book addressed ongoing communal tensions and located the position of women within them. The anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and the demolition of the Babri Masjid, which incited mass violence and divided women along religious lines, led to productions like Aurat aur Dharm (Women and Religion) and Zimedaar Kaun (Who is Responsible). Patan (Downfall) is about two friends from different communities who gradually turn enemies. Agar Mariam Hoti (If Mother Mary Were There) underlines the reality that women are among the worst affected in communal conflict and also the most active in the subsequent rehabilitation process.

A safe space for women

Mehrotra notes that theatre was a safe space for women to share personal experiences, a space that helped identify systemic issues, such as the connection between the poor health of women and economic poverty. Rakku ki Kahani (Rakku’s Story), a play produced in 1984, was about a family of construction workers unable to access medical care. Women construction workers were part of the production and performance of the play, and in the process, they worked towards solutions to fight the double oppression.

Feminist street theatre brought women’s narratives to light, gave them a collective voice, and created an identity that they could embrace. Mehrotra illustrates how theatre empowers women to confront atrocity and assert themselves through the example of Moloyashree Hashmi. A member of Jana Natya Manch, Hashmi returned to the site where her husband, Safdar Hashmi, had been fatally injured, to finish performing the play Halla Bol, just a day after his funeral.

Mehrotra writes about the work of groups such as the Chuim Community Centre in Mumbai, which developed the play Ek Thee Achhi Ladki (There was a good girl). She also mentions the work of Sahiyaar Stree Sangathan of the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda that produced Dahej ka Danav (The Demon of Dowry), a play on the devaluation of girls and the exploitation of women. It was common for these plays to be left open-ended: the audience had to decide whether the protagonist must succumb to patriarchy or fight her way out of it. In Teri Meri Kahani (Your Story, and Mine), produced by the Chattisgarh Mahila Jagriti Sangathan, a woman rises from her grave to reveal how her in-laws threw acid on her and burnt her to death. Its script leaves it to the audience to decide how her husband’s new bride must act. This method was used to inspire discussion and encourage the audience to reflect and take a stand.

Walking Out also highlights how street theatre democratised the art form. Scripts were often collectively written, productions were fluid, and performances were open to improvisation, free from the constraints of the formal stage and copyright issues. These works rarely had a single author, director, or fixed cast. For example, while Maya Rao and Anuradha Kapur set the basic structure of Om Swaha, the actors improvised the content, and performers changed regularly.

The book would have been more complete with insights into the daily workings of these theatre groups—specifically their organisation, decision-making, and execution. Since Mehrotra stresses on autonomy as a rebellion against the institutionalisation of the women’s movement, one wonders: how was this autonomy practiced in their everyday operations?

That said, Walking Out is full of interesting snippets: theatre groups negotiating with police to complete performances, the dynamics of men wanting to join, how women working full-time managed to participate actively in the movement, and how families navigated the dilemmas of women walking out and speaking up, among others. 

Sruti M.D. is an assistant professor, Department of English, Shiv Nadar University, Chennai.

Also Read | Stages of resistance

Also Read | Drama of life