Nirbhaya

I'm not going to get too pushy about this, but please follow this link to pledge in support of Nirbhaya, which is a play premiered earlier this year at the Edinburgh Festival. It's a response to the gang rape and murder of a medical student in New Delhi last year and it is now trying to raise funds to tour India itself.

I speak not with my reviewer's hat on at this point. As a piece of theatre, it has problems which if it were any other play I'd probably want to talk about. But that would be so spectacularly missing the point. It does the thing that theatre can do more brilliantly than any other medium when it comes to something like violence against women. It bears witness. As a member of that Edinburgh audience, I can only tell you what it felt like to be in that room - it felt like a contract was being signed between audience and performers. It read "I have seen now, and these other witnesses can testify that I have seen. And now I will go and talk about it."

That is how a lot of religion works (lets not forget how religious most cultures' theatre is in origin) and in support of a bad idea can be pernicious. But in this case I came out and, having suppressed my primary urge to punch the wall repeatedly for 15 minutes screaming Oh God No, resolved to talk a lot, to an almost boring degree, about sex and sexuality and consent and respect and that silent scream of anguish, muffled across the world, of millions of women in abusive and rape-based relationships. And it will do far more good in its home country than here.

There are plenty of good causes to pledge for, of course, but this is something I can really vouch for. For it not to go to India would be a disgrace. Just make it happen.