Kavan: Abhishek Majumdar-directed Ambedkarite opera premiering at Prithvi Theatre this weekend
A collaboration between Yalgaar Sanskrutik Manch and Nalanda Arts Studio, Kavan is opening at Prithvi Theatre on February 8 and 9. Here’s an interview with Abhishek Majumdar and Dhammarakshit Randhive…
By Reema Gowalla
I n a 2021 interview with TheatreRoom, acclaimed theatre-maker and author Abhishek Majumdar had expressed his desire to take the helm of an opera. Fast forward to 2025, he is ready to open an Ambedkarite opera at the iconic Prithvi Theatre on February 8. A curious collaboration between Mumbai’s Yalgaar Sanskrutik Manch and Bengaluru-based Nalanda Arts Studio, Kavan is a Hindi ‘operatic satire about young Ambedkarite experiences’. The 150-minute performance attempts to encapsulate rapidly changing India — an ambitious country full of contradictions and marginalizations’.
Based on real-life experiences, Kavan is penned and performed in poetry and songs, following the tradition of Ambedkari Shahiri Jalsa. The story is written by Sudesh Jadhav and directed by Abhishek, with Irawati Karnik and Jocelyn Clarke in charge of dramaturgy. The music is composed by MD Pallavi, along with the ensemble that includes Siddharth Pratibhawant, Pravin Mukta, Priypal Dashantee, Dhammarakshit Randhive, Amruta Todarmal and Apurva Kadam. The project is supported by New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) Arts and Humanities and co-commissioned by The Arts Center at NYUAD.
In Kavan, a young Bejul and those around him navigate their dreams, desires and dilemmas through caste and class. When his Lok Shahir father is killed, Bejul must choose a path that has the potential to transform his life, but at the same time cost him his identity and sense of belonging.
Ahead of the premiere, Abhishek (A) and Dhammarakshit (D) engaged in a candid conversation about the collaboration between Yalgaar and Nalanda, the making of Kavan, the relevance of the piece in today’s India, and more. Excerpts:
Q. What led to the collaboration between Yalgaar and Nalanda? When did it all begin?
A. It all began a few years ago when I was commissioned by Prithvi Theatre to direct a modern adaptation of a Prithviraj Kapoor play, Kisan. While making the piece, which was just before the Covid-19 pandemic, I met with Dhamma [Dhammarakshit], who is one of the founders of Yalgaar. During the same time, I was also in touch with actor Chhaya Kadam and various other artists, who did a workshop with us in Bengaluru. It was an interesting experience to work on this play, because Kisan was written just after the Independence of India. The story focused on the disillusionment of farmers with the new-found freedom, and why they felt their condition did not improve much. Kisan didn’t dive into any questions relating to caste because of its own time and space, of course. But we felt that if we were to retell the story, we cannot not take the question of caste into account. Obviously because, in the ensuing years, we saw that if you were an upper-caste farmer in Punjab, for instance, your condition was very different from that of a Dalit farmer in Punjab, Haryana or even Bengal.
Caste plays a huge role in the way we understand society today, as opposed to that time. I think earlier it was accepted in a very different or rather unqualified manner. Many Dalit workers, artists and scholars have worked very hard to bring the Ambedkarite question to the centre of conversations about how we define and shape Indian society. One of the successes of that, of course, is electoral politics, where Dalit voters have an important role to play. So, we were thinking of going down that road of exploring what caste would mean in the adaptation of Kisan. But for a variety of reasons, particularly through the pandemic, that play never happened. Nevertheless, we continued to stay in touch and ideate on working together, especially Dhamma and I. Then eventually, about two years ago, we started doing some online work, mostly writing stuff, with Yalgaar and a Kolkata-based queer-feminist performers collective, called Birati Samuho, headed by Titas Dutta.
I initially felt there would be one play with both the groups, because these groups are what we broadly term as ‘politics of the margins’. However, if you consider the number of people occupying the margins, you would realise that it’s not a margin anymore. So, one was also trying to look at all these so-called non-mainstream things, strands of politics, delving into questions like… What do they have in common? What are factors they are resistant to; what’s common among these movements? Eventually, we realised that these groups can be in the same project, but there needs to be two different plays, mainly because their stories are different and complete in their own right.
So, keeping that in mind, we started separating the projects. Then, I came to Mumbai, went to Yalgaar a few times and attended a few of their Ambedkari Shahiri Jalsas. We started deliberating on things. Later, Pallavi came on board as a musician and Irawati as a dramaturge. We all began working together and the process went on for about a year. In July 2024, we also did a workshop, and then Sudesh started writing the story of Kavan. After the script was developed, the Yalgaar team, Irawati and I took about six months to write the libretto of the opera. Simultaneously, Pallavi, along with the members of Yalgaar, composed the music. Now, we’re all set for the opening shows at Prithvi Theatre.
Q. As a collaborative piece, what does Kavan mean to you? How do you see its relevance in the world of Indian theatre today?
A. We all know that since 2014, attacks on artistic freedom and expression have been on the rise. Artists and activists in different parts of the country are facing challenges, while their work is being banned or removed amid rampant violence. This, in turn, has created an atmosphere of fear among artists, resulting in many withholding their art. Speaking from that perspective, entering collaborative projects may also mean that artists are putting out their art while also trying to stay away from being harmed. While making the world a better place remains our dream, what’s more important at this point is to join hands and move forward together. It would also help echoing each other’s efforts. Having said that, not every collaboration is mutually beneficial. There are times when one group gives out the vibe that they are doing the other a favour. We definitely wanted to stay away from that sort of a situation. However, this particular collaboration is drawn up organically over a period of two years. We took our time to understand each other, form a bond and then create Kavan.
When we meet people who seem to already know our friends and acquaintances, we often remark, ‘It’s a small world.’ But I feel that shouldn’t be the case. We need a bigger world of rational and like-minded people, who support democracy and non-violence. Those circles are increasingly becoming smaller, and that’s sad. So, this is a new beginning to expand that circle with new friends. Hopefully, this play will open the door to a new audience for the kind of theatre that Yalgaar creates. While it’s pertinent that a play is artistic, engaging and entertaining, reaching out to more and more people is equally important.
Q. In the past, you have directed Desdemona Roopakam, which is a chamber opera, and now you are at the helm of an Ambedkarite opera. Given that both the projects have a social imperative, how do you reflect on the experience of working on them?
A. Interestingly, there’re a lot of similarities between Desdemona Roopakam and Kavan. Although Desdemona Roopakam has a strand of Shakesperae’s Othello, it is more about feminist politics. It challenges the epics, while taking inspiration from a number of real-life stories. During the making of Desdemona Roopakam, I learned one very important thing — which I think every theatre-maker in a way learnt during Covid-19 — that if you stepped out of home during the pandemic and made a show, it would have to be about something that you were willing to go a great distance for.
Otherwise, it won’t make sense at all. Maybe that is true for every play one does, but it also becomes important to recognise that it is true of all collaborators too. When we started working with Yalgaar, it became very clear that as an Ambedkarite group that does Shahiri Jalsa, there is Ambedkarite politics in every waking moment of their life. It’s not a choice, it’s just who they are. So, in many ways, one of the things that I had to do was to stop being a leader while making Kavan.
The leader of this entire process is actually Yalgaar. If you look at all the decisions that have been made which traditionally would be a director’s call are finalised by the group — from what goes into the script, how the costumes and colour schemes should be to how the play ends. As the director, all I am doing is stitching their decisions together to make a cohesive piece. I am literally just directing their decisions, not deciding on things, not to say that I disagree with their decisions. It means that I agree with their process too. It’s a very different role from that of a conventional director. But, I think, it’s a good difference. Same was the case with Desdemona Roopakam. Even in that play, the script was written by everybody, mostly all the women in the group. They were the ones who also decided on the songs. The piece has voices of women from different age groups.
So what has happened over a period of time is that as a director, I have become very comfortable with the idea of not being the primary decision-maker, but instead creating a room where many people can make decisions, and I can play my part of stitching them all together. I had a process like that as a writer for many years. When I was working on the Kashmir plays [The Djinns of Eidgah] or the Tibetan play [Pah-La], I would ask people a lot of questions and then try to write a script that represented their views more than mine. Ofcourse, my views are shaped by their views, because these are other people’s subjects, and I’m interested to learn more about them. Similarly, in the case of Kavan, all the reading, viewing and discussions have led to a situation where I feel happy to say that I’m one of the craftsmen of this piece, but definitely not the leader.
Q. How would you describe the story of Kavan?
A. Primarily, Kavan is the story about a young man, called Bejul, whose father was a Lok Shahir — an Ambedkarite social reform musical form that includes a lot of protest songs and poetry. However, after Bejul’s father gets killed, his religious mother dissuades him from taking up Shahir. Initially, even he wants to stay away from it. The play is about Bejul becoming a Shahir. It is the journey of someone who accepts certain conceptions of the world as given, just the way we comply with the social norms of gender, caste and various other things. He then begins to realise that many constraints in his life are actually man-made, and not predetermined. The classic one being that if you belong to a specific caste, the opportunities that you have in life and the discrimination that you face are substantially different from that of somebody from a higher caste. And that’s not just a question about education, economic status or health. It forms the very bedrock of the Hindu caste system. So, Bejul’s journey signifies a certain political definition through music.
Q. Tell us about your role in the play…
D. First, it’s a collective work which, I feel, is kind of rare in today’s time. In the age of social media, where the number of likes and followers on a page determine the credibility of a piece of work, many people hesitate to come together and create something offline. In Kavan, the subplots and characters are jointly developed by the teams. I play the role of the protagonist (Bejul’s) father, who’s a Shahir. He’s into progressive/protest music, who raised his voice against the ills of Brahmanism and casteism through his craft. His music, however, costs his life later.
Following his death, Bejul doesn’t feel motivated enough to continue his father’s art, and instead gets drawn towards religion and Manuvad. That’s when his father appears in Bejul’s dreams, in an effort to take him back to his roots. In some sense, this character is inspired by Mahatma (Jyotirao) Phule’s movement and social activism. Meanwhile, I am also playing the role of the narrator in the band.
Veena Appiah is the producer and production manager for the play. Diya Naidu is in charge of choreography and light design is done by Niranjan Gokhale. Busshan Patil is the set designer and Gaurav Singh Nijjer is the video designer. Amruta Todarmal has handled costume design.
Catch the opening shows of Kavan at Mumbai’s Prithvi Theatre on February 8 (5pm and 9pm) and February 9 (5pm and 9pm). You can book your tickets here.
