Offtrack (2012)
Mammoth effort, the play was staged in New York as part of the PTW festival in 2012. Scripted and directed by Sanjay Kumar, it was based on series of workshop theatre exercises spread from 2008 to 2012 with platform children in the shelters and reformatories in Delhi and Rajasthan.
A unique exercise in which the facilitators of these workshops and some other members of pandies played, in turn, the platform boys and themselves for a powerful critique of our world and its values from these children – drug peddlers and sex workers.
When the two voices came together, the play became a challenge to all norms of structured living. Asking for greater resources and fundamental changes in policies vis-a-vis these children, Offtrack takes another step in pandies’ movement towards a theatre of Confrontation asking its audience to define better ‘roles’ for itself.
The complete script of Offtrack, translated from multiple languages into English is available in Sanjay’s forthcoming book Exploring Play, The pandies’ Way: Performing, teaching and writing theatre in Delhi, contemporary India.