Kranti (Revolution) empowers girls from Mumbai's red-light areas to become agents of social change. In 2014, Kranti's girls wrote, directed and performed a play in dozens of theaters and festivals - they helped change the mindsets of thousands of people about sex workers and their children. Their latest play, Lal Batti Express (Red-Light Express), is a compilation of their life stories and experiences...help bring their voices from India's streets and theaters to communities across America!
"Why do adults who feed me think they have the right to use my body?" "Why is my work (sex work) not considered work?" "Just because I'm a sex worker's daughter, does that mean I don't have a right to education?" "If the police's job is to protect us, why do they take advantage of our situation?" These are just some of the questions girls and women grapple with on a daily basis in Mumbai's red-light area. And we are using theater to raise these questions with audiences around the world.
We are 13 girls, aged 14-19, who are using dance, music and theater to change people's minds about us, our moms, and our community. Everywhere we perform our play, people tell us they've learned so much: that girls like us face so much discrimination, that our mothers work hard and deserve legal protection and equal rights, and that our community is filled with talented people who deserve a fair chance at life. Who knew theater could change the world?? We didn't before, but we do now!
Laal Batti Express (Red-Light Express) is a play about our past, present and future: our mothers' work, our childhoods in brothels, the discrimination we faced, the struggles we overcame, and our future hopes and dreams. We want to travel with this play because traveling with Kranti has broadened our worldview and given us the inspiration we need to be change agents. We know that others need inspiration to make change too - so we'll bring our community to theirs, through the magic of theater!
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
