Jiundo Akash, a Nepali play that depicts the woes of a transgender woman, has been staged at the ongoing eighth International Olympic Drama Festival. The play was staged in Guwahati and then at the premises of National School of Drama, New Delhi, last week. 

Written by Chandra Prakash Pandey and directed by RK Roshan Mehta, the play features a solo performance by actor Anil Subba. The background music for the play was scored jointly by Binod Banjara, Tanka Tiger Sangraula, and Sushant Chalise. 

Along with the regular audience of the festival, several Nepalis living in Guhawati and New Delhi came to watch the staging. “Because the play brings marginalised voices to the stage, Jiundo Akash is an important addition to the festival,” said Pranjal Shah, coordinator of the festival. 

First staged in Charikot, Dolakha at a theatre festival on June 11, 2016, Jiundo Akash had a successful run at Sarwanam Theatre in July of last year, and again from February 23 to March 3 before heading to the international festival. 

Pandey, the writer of the hour-long play, claimed that this was one of the first plays to bring out the issues of the transgender community of Nepal. “I was unaware of the plight of the transgender community until I started researching for the play,” Pandey told the Post, “Mehta [the director] encouraged me to write the play because he had felt that Nepali theatre was not responding to the LGBTI community’s fight for recognition and dignity.” 

The play follows the childhood of a boy who slowly realises that he is, in fact, a male only by accident. In Pandey’s words, the play attempts to show the internal and external struggle of a transgender person to find acceptance in society.

The play, when staged in Dolakha, was enacted by the director himself, but Mehta felt that he needed to direct somebody else in order to bring out the nuances of the story, and shared that with each staging, the play has received greater depth.