Community Theater for Mumbai Red-Light Area Girls

Dear Friends,

I hope all of you are wonderful. My name is Pinky and I am writing to thank you for helping us with our theatre program. I am 17, studying in 10^th, and I love to dance. I stay at Kranti NGO, which empowers girls from Mumbai’s red-light areas to become agents of social change. At Kranti we work to change people’s ideas and views about sex work – we want people to see us like normal kids, not sex workers’ kids. We want people to respect sex workers and give them their rights, not oppress them. And this is why we have a theatre project.

I never thought I would like theatre, but I had soooo much fun acting in our play! A few months ago, we Krantikaris wrote a play that shows all of the problems we face as children in the red-light area – police harassment, mean teachers, sexual abuse, and many other things. We thought it was just a small play about our life – but oh my god, it has been SUCH a big hit! We Krantikaris got to perform at Prithvi Theater, National Council of Performing Arts, and all the other big theatres in Mumbai where we always used to go to see plays….we never thought we would someday PERFORM a play there!

Because our play was such a big hit, we decided to teach other girls to use theatre too. Two months ago, Kranti organized a program where 30 girls from different red light areas in India came to learn about theatre. The training was in Himachal, at the bottom of the Himalayan mountains! It was beautiful, perfect place for learning theatre and sharing our stories. For some girls, it was their first time leaving their city or state, for some it was first time outside their red-light area. Together we made so many plays and we want to perform these plays all over India until everyone respects sex workers and their children!

Thank you so much for being part of our theatre program. We couldn’t have done all this without you! :)

Sincerely,
Pinky