Feminist Manifesto at the National School of Drama

Walking Through the Museum of Women’s Memories

Maya Kulshrshth 

Watching Feminist Manifesto at the National School of Drama was not merely an evening of theatre; it was an immersion into memory—personal, collective, historical, and political. What unfolded on stage was not a linear narrative but a living archive, one that soothed the soul even as it unsettled deeply held assumptions. Long after the performance ended, its questions lingered, refusing closure.

Performed in Malayalam, the production offered an invitation that felt both risky and liberating: to experience the play without depending on the translator screen. We chose to accept that invitation. Movement, breath, silence, rhythm, music, and gaze carried meaning with extraordinary clarity. The body became language; stillness became argument. This is theatre at its most potent—when words step aside and truth arrives through presence.

Directed with sensitivity and philosophical clarity by Abhimanyu Vinayakumar for Janabheri, Feminist Manifesto draws inspiration from the ideas of Nigerian novelist and feminist thinker Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, particularly her essay Dear Ijeawale: A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. Rather than adapting the text directly, the production expands its spirit into a theatrical meditation—one that speaks across cultures, geographies, and generations.

At the heart of the play is a fictional journey: a young girl travels with her mother into a symbolic “Museum of Memories.” This museum is not a static repository but a living, breathing space inscribed with women’s struggles in their search for answers to questions that appear innocent, yet are profoundly political. Why are women’s bodies controlled? Why is silence demanded? Why is knowledge so often punished in women? And why does power feel threatened when a woman knows herself?

As the journey unfolds, history, geography, mythology, literature, and the arts emerge as witnesses. The play suggests that women’s lives across time share a disturbing continuity—a repetition of violence, erasure, and moral regulation that societies repeatedly attempt to normalize or forget. These memories refuse erasure. Even when we pretend that the darkness of night is illuminated, the shadows remain.

The narrative invokes figures across cultural and temporal spectrums. When we encounter Phoolan Devi, we confront the extreme cruelty of child marriage and caste violence. Through mythic and literary references—such as Matsyagandhi, who is offered a “new life” only by erasing her former self—we see how women’s survival is often framed as rebirth, when in truth it is displacement. The tragedy of Desdemona exposes how suspicion wielded by patriarchal power can be fatal, while Nora stands as a reminder that feminism cannot remain theoretical—it must be lived, enacted, and risk-taking.

What unites these stories is not victimhood, but knowledge. The play insists that memory itself is political. To know is to resist. To remember is to reclaim.

The structure of the performance mirrors this philosophy. Four women from distinct social backgrounds occupy the stage, their lives intersecting at a shared and brutal truth: women’s bodies and emotions are continuously colonized, whether in rural spaces or elite intellectual circles. Molestation, silencing, emotional exploitation, and entitlement are not presented as isolated acts of cruelty, but as systemic patterns sustained by social complicity.

One of the most unsettling aspects of the production is its exposure of hypocrisy. Even progressive, educated spaces—those that pride themselves on liberal values—often expect women to remain agreeable, emotionally available, and quietly accommodating. A woman may speak, but only within limits. She may resist, but not disrupt. Feminist Manifesto shatters that comfort.

Here, when a woman breaks her silence, she does not become fragile. She becomes powerful. And that power destabilizes everyone around her.

Visually, the production is restrained yet evocative. The minimal set design by Nisar allows seamless transitions between emotional and symbolic landscapes without distraction. Objects are sparse, gestures precise. Nothing is ornamental; everything serves the narrative. The stage becomes an extension of the Museum of Memories—open, fluid, and charged.

Equally striking is the discipline and cohesion of the ensemble. Nearly forty artists come together with remarkable synchronicity, many of whom travelled from Dubai to be part of this production. Particularly compelling were two classical dancers trained at Kerala Kalamandalam, whose grounding in traditional technique translated into extraordinary bodily control, emotional precision, and stillness. Their presence reaffirmed how classical training, when freed from rigidity, can become deeply political.

As a dancer, one moment resonated with special force. Aswini, a trained Kuchipudi dancer, sang live on stage. It was a quiet but radical act. Within classical traditions, dancers are often trained singers, yet rarely permitted to use that voice publicly. By allowing the dancer to sing, the production gently but firmly dismantled an internal hierarchy—one that mirrors broader patriarchal structures. The body was no longer separate from the voice. Expression was whole.

At its core, Feminist Manifesto is not a play about anger alone. It is about inner reclamation. It urges women to turn inward—to cultivate peace, skill, study, and artistic devotion rather than seek validation from systems that profit from their silence. It asks women to stop pleasing those who consume emotional labour without accountability.

This production does not shout.

It listens.

And in that listening, it asks society an uncomfortable question:

If a woman truly knows her history, her body, her art, her inner self—what control remains over her?

Feminist Manifesto is not merely a theatrical work.

It is a mirror held up to memory.

And for many, it may become a reckoning.