Staging Monologues Around Justice and Freedom

Parna Pethe's directorial debut is an experimental piece, featuring four monologues by an all-women cast and crew

- Prachi Sibal

time of the Dreyfus affair (1894-1906), in Sri Lanka during the Civil War (1983-2009), and in Gujarat during the 2002 riots. They resonated deeply with Pethe, and she decided to bring them to stage as the play, Something Like Truth. "The monologues, in essence, help us make sense of the four pillars of democracy. But, they do so metaphorically," she says.

It wasn't just the themes that resonated with Pethe. "I was struck by the structure of the play, and the fact that it had very little or no stage directions. It was exciting to discover the potential of theatricality in the monologues—of finding a form for content that was already so structured," she says.