Theater itself is rebellion: Gauri Ramnarayan

Playwright, theater director and journalist Gauri Ramnarayan was unexpectedly pleased when 30 people turned up to her workshop titled ‘Hands On: Write a Play’. The Hindu Lit for Life on Sunday (January 18, 2026). Describing theater as “a niche of Chennai”, she said, “I was surprised to see so many people interested in playwriting.” He pointed out that many people would not read a play unless it was prescribed to them by a college curriculum or school curriculum.

Workshop attendees included engineers, teachers, theater enthusiasts and aspiring playwrights. It was actually a “mixed group,” Ms. Ramnarayan said. “Even someone like me, who doesn’t know much about theater, can understand,” said student attendee Angeline Anto.

‘Voice of the voiceless’

“Why do you want to write a play?” the playwright asked. Sunandan Dutta, 31, a Calcutta-based robotics engineer, replied: “My background is in technology, but I want to know how to write science into plays.” Other attendees said that stories are better told through theater because of its more direct form of storytelling.

Ms. Ramnarayan gave him simple but effective advice: “If you want to write a play, you have to read plays critically.”

He read to them an excerpt from his play, when things fall apartwhich he described as “a protest play”. It reinterprets an episode from the Mahabharata, proving that it is possible to talk about important current issues using a mythological story. “Theatre itself is a rebellion,” he told attendees, “you are the voice of the voiceless.”

show, don’t tell

Ms. Ramnarayan started the interactive session by explaining the important differences between playwriting and story writing. A playwright’s work goes beyond the script, requiring them to pay attention to technical aspects such as lighting, location, and how props might work.

He insisted, “Drama comes alive on the stage, not on the page.” The writer must ask herself, “Where will the actors be?” He said, theater is a medium that requires the playwright to imagine the stage and hone craftsmanship, an exercise that is intellectual as well as creative.

“Let’s see how the ancients saw theatre,” he said, outlining Bharata’s concept along with the six Aristotelian rules of drama. may you be adulterousOr moving emotions. According to Ms. Ramnarayan, the main thing is not to tell, but to “show” how the characters feel. “The audience loves a challenge,” he said. This principle of showing rather than telling emotions was practiced through an exercise that asked attendees to take classic fables and turn them into dialogues that revealed the subtle emotions in the age-old stories.