Firefly Women is an interactive Physical Theatre piece. It explores ideas of Feminist utopia(s) against the backdrop of letters written from jail by three Indian women incarcerated under a draconian law and Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s story “Sultana’s Dream”. In their letters to their friends, lovers and comrades, the women write about their memories of cold winter nights at protest sites, learning lessons on resilience from their fellow inmates, the numbing monotony of prison life, keeping hope alive and the need to keep the work for a Feminist revolution going, even as they are incarcerated. The piece contains excerpts from Begum Rokeya’s “Sultana’s Dream” and elements of audience interaction that invite the audience to participate in the making of a world free of oppression. The piece attempts at finding inroads into solidarity, collective dreaming, resilience and hope in these dark times.

About the performers:

Manjari is a queer feminist performer, director and Theatre facilitator with over a decade of experience. She is a graduate of the DUENDE School of Ensemble Physical Theatre (2015) and holds a Master's degree from The School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University (2010). She is a recent recipient of Frankfurt MOVES! (supported by Frankfurt Lab), Think Arts 2022 and Genderalities 2.0 (supported by ReFrame Arts) Grants She also works extensively with children, creating work for and with young people in the theatre. Manjari’s area of investigation in performance making lies in anti-oppressive, experimental and movement based work. Most of her Theatre learnings come from peer sharing and community based work rather than institutionalized learning spaces for Arts practices. Gender, sexuality and memory expressed through a personally political lens are leitmotifs in her work.

Deepika Chauhan is an actor, performer and teacher based in Delhi. Her work revolves majorly around physicality in performance making. Currently, she is a theatre faculty at Pathways School Noida. She has been a part of theatre productions like Under Pressure (dir. Aruna Ganesh Ram), Rashomon (dir. Avtar Sahni), UpRoute, Firefly Women(dir. Manjari Kaul), Irada Kuchh aur Tha( dir. Juhi Jha).

About the Company:

Improper Fractions (IF) came into being in the summer of 2012, dedicated to exploring the incongruous, disruptive, off-key in theatre as well as to practice solidarities and create safe spaces for self expression. We are interested in the co-existence of different forms and patterns of movement and speech, and in creating possibilities for intersections, and parallels. Gender and memory have been major preoccupations in our work. We equally commit ourselves to introducing and nurturing theatre for the young, through plays for children and workshops on storytelling, movement and improvisation.

IF’s major productions include “TempoReal” (a duet about women’s bodies and time), “The Two-Headed Lore”(a play for young adults that retells famous myths and fairytales through a queer feminist lens),“UpRoute” (a piece about home and exile),“Chronicle of a Death Foretold” (based on the novella by Gabriel Garcia Marquez that investigates an honour killing).