The Theatre of Survival
American playwright Lynn Nottage set Ruined inside a bar in war-torn Congo. She tells the story of women struggling to survive amid the relentless brutality of war and sexual violence. The play follows women who live and work in a bar run by Mama Nadi; the place offers them protection in the middle of chaos, even as it exposes them to new forms of exploitation.
Ruined went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2009, and several other major international awards.
This story by Nottage now serves as the basis of Barbaad, theatre director Feisal Alkazi’s adaptation of the drama, which will be performed at Delhi’s Kathika Cultural Centre on February 8.
Alkazi says when he read Ruined he was struck by how it replicated the Indian realities. “I felt this was completely an Indian situation,” he remarks, adding that the setting of a conflict-prone region in Chhattisgarh came to him immediately.
In Barbaad, the play is centred around a brothel located in a conflict zone of Chhattisgarh. The place is often visited by Naxalites, Adivasis and security forces belonging to the region. The storyline deals with violence against women, land alienation and the human cost of development.
Making it Indian
For over decades, gender has been a recurrent concern in Alkazi's work. "Gender has been a major theme in many of my plays over the last 30 to 40 years," he tells TMS. "So, I found this to be really appealing."
However, securing permission to adapt a Western text is often a challenge, given strict copyright laws, said the theatre director. Alkazi recalls being pleasantly surprised when Nottage’s team responded positively. With the help of translator and adaptor Sushant Agarwal, permission was granted to rework the play for an Indian audience.
Alkazi is still in awe of the support shown by Nottage’s team. “Usually, you can’t change a line or even a name. But they were more than welcoming and readily gave their approval,” he says.
The adaptation process took about a year. While the overall structure of Ruined remains unchanged, the context of Barbaad is quite Indian. For instance, the Congolese tribal character in the original script becomes an Adivasi in the adaptation. The backstories of characters take inspiration from issues of land alienation, poverty, caste and state violence.
Interestingly, language was also reworked to suit the new setting. Agarwal created a fictional tribal language called Tikri for the play. “It sounds a bit like Bhojpuri, but it’s not,” the director adds. “It was deliberately created to reflect how languages gradually fall out of use and eventually become extinct — how they simply stop being spoken and die a natural death.”
A pandemic pause
Alkazi says that rehearsals for Barbaad had already started when the COVID-19 lockdown forced the production to stop. When theatres reopened, he decided not to go back to the play so soon. “After the pandemic, none of us wanted to see something grim,” he says. “We had lived through too much loss and silence.”
Instead, he staged a more visually rich, “upbeat” production full of music and dance based on the Mahabharata. Three or four years later, Barbaad was picked up again. Some male roles were recast, while the majority of the female actresses remained the same. Rehearsals resumed in early 2025, and the play opened at the India Habitat Centre in April.
Since then, it has been staged in Delhi, Gurugram and Bengaluru, receiving strong audience responses.
Ethics of staging
Despite being set in a brothel and dealing with subjects of sexual harassment, prostitution and violence, Alkazi is careful to avoid sensationalism. “I don’t believe in that kind of theatre,” he notes. “We do not rely on films or video references. The process involves extensive reading and adapting the play around the social realities and issues that surround its world.”
Throughout, Alkazi was cautious enough to stop short of the sensational. That restraint, he says, is something he and his team is known for — with the ability to engage with extremely difficult material without turning it into something titillating for the audience, even though that is a challenging balance to maintain.
However, given the intensity of the themes, coupled with the actors’ realistic performances, some scenes have also proved difficult for audiences. Alkazi recalls a performance in Gurugram where an audience member left during the interval, overwhelmed by the show.
He believes that the story of Barbaad is especially relevant in today’s time: “I think much of today’s world is still being fought over women’s bodies. Women continue to be at the receiving end of such tremendous violence.”
The play also reflects on environmental destruction, particularly the impact of mining and development on forest communities.
Performed by the Ruchika Theatre Group, Barbaad features a cast of 16 actors ranging in age from their 20s to mid-60s. Even in a time dominated by films and streaming platforms, Alkazi believes theatre remains irreplaceable.
“Theatre can never be replaced,” he says. “It has been there since the time of the Greeks, and it is still alive today, centuries later. The experience of watching live theatre — or live music or dance — can never be replaced by a film or an OTT programme. You simply cannot get that feeling, because the person on stage is living the emotion in that moment, and that emotion is being passed on directly to you.”