The Dense Emptiness of an Empty Stage

A few weeks ago, I sat down to write the first piece of a new column for Daily Sakal, one of Maharashtra's oldest and most-read newspapers. The column is called Avakash Ghana Pokal (अवकाश घन पोकळ), a phrase I borrowed from the 17th-century Marathi sant-poet Ramdas. It translates, roughly, to "the dense emptiness of space," a hollow that is somehow full, a silence that hums with potential.

I chose that phrase because I think it describes theatre perfectly. And theatre, in all its forms, in all its messiness and magic, is what this column is about.

"अवकाश घन पोकळ । गगनाऐसें" | The dense emptiness, vast as the sky. - Sant Ramdas.

The column is in Marathi. My Marathi readers will find it there. But I know many people who love theatre, literature, and the arts, who grew up watching diverse forms of performances but don't read Marathi. I want to bring this conversation to them too, in English, right here.

So who am I, and why should you read this?

I'm a playwright, poet, fiction writer, translator, and editor. I teach literature and theatre at FLAME University in Pune. I've spent the better part of my adult life in and around drama, reading plays and writing them, watching theatre and writing about it. I've been moved to tears by a one-person show in a tiny black box in Pune, and bored stiff by an elaborate production at a prestigious festival. I've translated between languages and between worlds. And I keep coming back to dramatic literature and theatre because I think it is, at its core, the most human thing we do.

Peter Brook, the legendary director, once wrote that all you need for theatre is an empty space, a person walking across it, and another person watching. That's it. No set, no lights, no script. Just attention, and presence. That radical simplicity is what Avakash Ghana Pokal wants to explore, the empty space that becomes electric with possibility.

I've been writing this column in Marathi for Daily Sakal. Now I want to open that conversation up in English, sometimes translating ideas directly, sometimes letting them breathe differently in a new language. I'll write about cultural practices around me, folk theatre and experimental theatre, about the politics of performance, about what Ambedkar understood about tamasha that politicians still don't, about the quiet revolution of community theatre in a village or a city, about AI and dramaturgy, and everything in between.

Theatre is not just entertainment. Well, it is, sometimes, wonderfully so. But it is also a laboratory for being human. A place where we rehearse grief, power, love, and failure. A democracy of empty chairs that can seat anyone. I want this space to feel exactly like that: open, a little unpredictable, and genuinely alive.