Project Darling: Celebrating racy disempowered women of theatre

The play ‘Project Darling’ explores female sexuality and challenges norms through dynamic characters, blending history and personal stories in Kannada theatre.

MUMBAI: We all know that bold, sharp-tongued, tough-as-nails woman—whether it’s a favourite aunt who never minces words, a neighbour unashamedly revelling in her sexuality, an elder cousin with razor-sharp wit, or a family friend whose larger-than-life presence commands every room. Unapologetically themselves, these women challenge conventions, defy norms and refuse to be ignored.

Project Darling: Celebrating racy disempowered women of theatre

Theatre has long celebrated such fiery characters, turning their audacity into captivating performances. The Kannada-English play ‘Project Darling’, which will be staged in the city next week, embraces this tradition, bringing these dynamic personalities to life.

Written and directed by Bengaluru-based theatre actor and director Sharanya Ramprakash, she calls the play “a sharp exploration of female sexuality amidst India’s cultural and censorship crossroads.”

Ramprakash and collaborator Surabhi Vasisht stumbled upon this theme while researching marginalised company theatre actresses in Karnataka in 2020-21. The play centres around Khanavali Chenni, an iconic figure who wielded double entendre and innuendo to carve a space for herself in the male-dominated world of theatre between the ’60s to ’80s.

Blending fiction with history, the play follows a travelling troupe searching for their roots—the women performers who laid the foundation of their craft. In their quest, they encounter the legend of Chenni and hear stories from other actresses who navigated similar struggles and triumphs.

Ramprakash highlights how, despite the thematic prominence of women in Kannada’s cultural imagination—from ‘Igappa Hegede Vivaha Prahasana’ (1897) to Girish Karnad’s ‘Nagamandala’ (1997) — female performers in Kannada theatre have faced invisibilisation and marginalisation. The advent of the talkies in the 1940s brought women to the stage, whose artistry and labour were instrumental to the growth of company theatre. Yet, their contributions remain largely undocumented.

Through an India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) grant, Ramprakash embarked on a research project in 2020-21 to uncover the stories of these actresses—mainstage leads and comic performers alike. Her work explores how they navigated the misogyny entrenched in theatre culture and wonders how women survive when misogyny is framed as tradition.

“‘Project Darling’ blends history, research and bold artistic exploration to revive these untold stories, challenging audiences to rethink notions of respectability, agency and power on the stage and beyond. This distillation of the many mutinies, subversions and contradictions my research uncovered is the foundation on which I aim to construct a performance that interrogates what it means to be a female performer in theatre today,” says Ramprakash.

To achieve this, she draws inspiration from the German pedagogy of post-dramatic theatre, which offers a radical departure from conventional storytelling methods. Using its feminist possibilities, she seeks to engage with the material in a way that transcends mere representation. “I wanted to move away from simply ‘representing’ these women to responding through the physicality and lived experiences of the performers themselves,” she explains.

Her process involved delving deep into the layers of solidarity, contradiction and legacy that these characters carry, while simultaneously challenging and deconstructing the traditional conventions of dramatic theatre. “These elements are crucial to making the work resonate truthfully, not just as art but as a mirror to the nuanced lives we live as women and performers,” she emphasises.

By moving away from linear narratives and static representations, Ramaprakash strives to craft a space where stories can unfold in fluid, dynamic and transformative ways, opening up new avenues for understanding and dialogue around gender, identity and performance. She takes a non-traditional approach to casting, favouring collaboration over auditions. “When I work with a transgender woman, there’s no audition,” she explains. “We conduct workshops over a year, letting the play emerge organically.” The diverse cast—featuring two male actors and a transgender performer—reflects the play’s intersectional feminist ethos which was evolved through essays, workshops and iterative drafts.

While boldly tackling suppressed themes with audacity, playfulness and a tongue-in-cheek approach, ‘Project Darling’ rejects traditional dramatic arcs. “Women’s lives hardly follow neat beginnings, middles, or ends. There are no fixed happy endings or tragedies,” Ramaprakash says. “I think saying things as you feel is important. Through the process, we found a dramatic form to enable this.”

When asked if theatre can influence public perceptions of gender, she is reflective. “Artistes can’t change the world; they can only deeply examine themselves and their relationship with it. If a story resonates and changes someone’s life, that’s great—but that’s not art’s fundamental purpose,” she says. “Theatre has transformed how I see myself, my body and my relationship with society. It’s been an empowering journey of reclaiming my place in the world. For that, I’m deeply grateful to theatre.”

She laughs off the extreme nature of the diverse reactions ‘Project Darling’ elicits. “Reactions are shaped by factors like upbringing, experiences and cultural conditioning. But our identities are broad enough to hold multitudes. When a straight, cisgender person connects with a transgender performance, therein lies the victory of art. Differences often fade and when they don’t, they underscore how we navigate life uniquely even while sharing a common humanity,” she says.

(‘Project Darling’, will be staged a G5A, Mahalaxmi, on December 11.)