From child abuse to violence against women, to corruption, to oppression of the poor, to female foeticide, to honour killing – our society today is plagued by innumerable issues and there is a pressing need for awareness and change. Various mediums have served as a vehicle for social change. Street play is one of the oldest theatre forms where the artists enact in public places with no specific target audience. It is a genre of drama performed with music and dance which is known for its simplicity and creative execution. It serves as a metaphor that captures an image of moral nature which every layman can relate to. It is also known as ‘nukkad natak’.
This kind of recitation in high pitch will leave a huge impact in the minds of people. Generally the duration of the street play is very less. It is not an easy task for any actors to perform in an extensive group. Most of the time, the actors are uniformly dressed in order to bring the uniformity in behaviour, mindset and outlook of the people. This genre of theatrical performance has evolved as an influential medium that unites people from different walks of life breaking the conventions of theatre. Change in the society comes with the change in the mindset of people. Street play can rightly play a role to achieve the goal.
AWAG has been active on the issue of Violence against Women and continually devises fresh strategies to address this issue. More recently, in an endeavour to apply Street Theatre as a medium to highlight issues like good touch-bad touch, sexual harassment at workplace & public spaces, sex determination and girls’ education, AWAG has produced a street play ‘Hun Puchun Chu, Kem?’ (I ask, Why?) based on the injustice faced by women in society. The play was performed in several areas and educational institutes of Ahmedabad thereby reaching out to over 2000 people.
A street play is known for its catchy dialogues, attractive slogans and powerful dramatic elements like tragedy, humour, mimicry etc. The primary goal of a street play is taking a social message to a mass of people. This helps to create a sense of awareness in the society in which we live. Every street play has a specific public social theme and the actor who performs should posses the skill to exhibit and portrays the theme well. The dialogues are colloquial and should be rendered monotonously with a clear and loud voice.