Inspired by true events, Nirbhaya, a play written and directed by Yael Farber, is playing at the Nightwood Theatre in the Distillery District. The award-winning play was sparked by the events of December 16, 2012 in South Delhi, India. A group of six men brutally raped a woman and assaulted her male companion when the two boarded a bus on their way home from the movies. Jyoti Singh, whose name was prohibited from being released by the press at the time of the rape, became known as “Nirbhaya,” the Hindi word for fearless one. Singh later died of the severe injuries sustained from the rape and beatings. Media outlets all over the world covered the assault, inspiring thousands of people across India to break the taboo of silence and discuss the reality of sexual assault, violence, and abuse in India.
Nirbhaya uses the rape of Nirbhaya as the framework for the play, focusing on the experienced sexual violence of five women. As these women take turns sharing their lived stories, Nirbhaya is always present in her white gown, singing and haunting the actors and audience. The five other characters speak of marital abuse, molestation, and violence with the rawness of lived knowledge so that no one in the audience is left untouched or comfortable.
Nirbhaya’s richness and power as a play resides specifically in its unplay-like nature. Yes, Nirbhaya has many formal qualities of a play, a theatre setting, stage, lighting, props, and costumes, yet it rejects the notion of actors performing. These women have performed silence and submissiveness their whole lives, unable to speak of the violence done to and around them. However, when on stage, these women speak without apology or restraint for what they have gone through. As theatre-goers sit in rows, compelled by these horrific and moving stories, they empathize simultaneously with the real experiences.
Nirbhaya documents the specific horrors of violence that many Indian women have gone, and continue to go, through, yet also speaks to the condition of all victims and survivors. These people who have suffered violence, injustice, or indecency have been wounded, but that wound is what lets the light in. The bandage of silence is insufficient and the bondage to social taboos is suffocating. The women have chosen not to be scared by the darkness around them. They are not scabbed in silence, choosing to shine the spotlight on social injustices, allowing for change to occur.
Nirbhaya welcomes other people affected by violence to not mark themselves by the actions of others. Though it may hurt, survivors must peel back their scabs and deal with what lies beneath. Wounds come in all shapes, sizes, colours, and degrees of pain. They’re not discriminatory in that sense. No one can choose how they are wounded, but everyone can choose to allow wounds to fester in hatred, silence, and darkness, or heal in knowledge, sharing, and lightness.
The wound is the place where the light get in
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