About Us
Freeda Theatre is an inter-generational theatre collective of women from Scheduled Caste and Tribe communities, in Madhya Pradesh, India. Having grown up in deeply feudal and patriarchal contexts, the women have endured caste based discrimination, economic exploitation and sexual violence. The fight for justice, within the legal system, and in their communities has been difficult given prevailing casteism and moralities. In the aftermath of violence, the body becomes a site of shame, and the survivor finds her identity limited to the act of violence alone.
In these conditions, the women of Freeda turned to theater as a medium of catharsis, healing and self representation. Theatre enabled them to reconnect with their bodies in the aftermath of violence, and gave them the courage to articulate and express their dreams, aspirations and struggles. Negotiating and resisting forms of backlash, from family and community, the women have fought to move beyond the framework of being ‘survivors’of violence to reinvent themselves through theater. As they often say, it was from the stage that they feel they have finally received ‘justice.
The word ‘Freeda’ means to be free. Free from the restrictions imposed on the lives of girls and women in most parts of Rural India. It also means freedom from the existing frames in which a survivor of violence is often reduced to- Freeda is a creative energy for transformation and reinvention of self and community.
