V FOR…: This performance piece was conceived of in 1996 after three years of research into the causes of violence, which has toured eight countries and has been performed over 100 times, including for policy makers.
THE VIOLENCE PROJECT: 1995-96. With Darpana’s Centre for Non-Violence Through the Arts, this was a pilot school project run in the Amrit Firdaus School in Ahmedabad with a 100 children aged between 5 and 12, to let them explore their own feelings of violence and of being violated, in order to be able to deal with their aggression and their need for non-violence.
EXPLORING VIOLENCE: Taking the experience of a community called the Charas, a de-notified criminal community still at the receiving end of a lot of police violence, and using a real incident from their lives, a group of their youth was trained to perform a searing play called Budhan. The play was then taken around 30 sensitive schools and workshops conducted with 15 to 17 year olds on the feelings and situations of being violated or violating. The aim was to sensitize youngsters on the different kinds of violence and the different thresholds to it.