Jana Natya Manch
Tuesday 26th September 2023 at 8.30-10.30pm IST (4-6pm UK time) via Zoom
This workshop by the members of the street theater group Jana Natya Manch (JANAM), located in Delhi, will offer a glimpse of its organizational and artistic work over the past 50 years.
While using particular plays as examples from Janam’s extensive repertoire of performances, the workshop will concentrate on thematics, the nature of audiences, performance spaces, and the group’s active relationship with the trade unions and other host organizations.
By generating conversations on the processes involved in creating and performing political theatre, the session aims to connect with the international participants/attendees particularly activist theatre practitioners and trade unionists working among diverse communities of people.
The idea is to elaborate on what defines Janam’s work that is consciously political and partisan underlining the relationship between Art and Politics.
About Jana Natya Manch (Janam)
Formed in 1973, Janam is an amateur street theatre group based in Delhi. Since its inception the group has aligned its work with progressive democratic movements, and continued to take theatre straight to peoples’ places of work and residence. The group has done numerous performances of about 200 plays in the last five decades. Janam’s plays address subjects such as neo-liberal economic policies, trade union rights, women’s rights, rise in commodity prices, and communalism. The group mostly performs in Delhi and its working-class neighborhoods. It has also performed in other parts of India, and has presented its work in South Africa, the UK, the United States, and Palestine.
Explore @JanaNatyaManch on YouTube.
About the facilitators
Priyanka, Komita and Brijesh are members of Janam and have long worked in various creative and organisational capacities.