Performing care, empathy, and resilience: Eladidi in grassroots India

This article focuses on performative care in a socially engaged performance production, Eladidi, by Amta Parichay, a theatre group based in Howrah, in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. Since its premiere in 2015, there have been more than 600 productions of this play, mostly in unorthodox performance spaces, where it has spread care, empathy, and resilience among its grassroots audience. By representing the multidimensional narratives of women’s oppression in their daily lives and by appealing to the consciousness and empathy of the spectators about the same, the play participates in a caregiving drive – highlighting the ones to be cared for, the reasons to be cared for and to be cared about, and the ways to be taken care of. The intersection of gender, performance, and care in Eladidi produces an embodied realisation of care, empathy, resilience, and agency, which instrumentalises the performance not merely to address issues of gendered violence and marginalisation, but to acknowledge care as an essential social practice, while simultaneously promoting performative care as a form of social activism.