Gowri Ramnarayan throughout the workshop ‘From Web page to Stage: How you can Write a Play’ at The Hindu Lit for Life 2026 in Chennai on January 18, 2026.
| Photograph Credit score: Umesh Kumar
The workshop’s attendees included engineers, academics, theatre fanatics, and aspiring playwrights. It was actually a “blended group”, famous Ms. Ramnarayan. “Even somebody like me, who doesn’t know a lot about theatre, may perceive,” stated pupil attendee Angeline Anto.
‘Voice for the unvoiced’
“Why do you need to write a play?” the playwright requested. Sunandan Dutta, 31, a robotics engineer primarily based in Calcutta, answered: “My background is in know-how, however I need to know learn how to write science into performs.” Different attendees famous that tales are merely higher informed by way of theatre resulting from its being such a direct type of storytelling.
Ms. Ramnarayan supplied them easy however efficient recommendation: “If you wish to write a play, it’s essential learn performs critically.”
She learn them an excerpt from her personal play, When Issues Fall Aside, which she described as “a protest play.” It reinterprets an episode within the Mahabharata, proving that it potential to speak about necessary present points utilizing a mythic story. “Theatre itself is rebel,” she stated to the attendees, “You’re a voice for the unvoiced.”
Present, not inform
Ms. Ramnarayan started the interactive session by making the necessary distinction between playwriting and fiction writing. The job of a playwright goes past the script, requiring them to concentrate to technical features like lighting, house, and the way props would possibly work.
“A play comes alive on the stage, not the web page,” she emphasised. The author should ask herself, “The place are the actors going to be?” Theatre is a medium that requires the playwright to visualise the stage and hone craft expertise, an train that’s as inventive as it’s mental, she stated.
“Let’s have a look at how the ancients noticed theatre,” she stated, outlining the six Aristotelian guidelines of drama in addition to Bharata’s idea of vyabichari bhava, or oscillating feelings. In line with Ms. Ramnarayan, the bottom line is to not narrate however relatively to “present” how the characters really feel. “The viewers loves a problem,” she stated. This precept of displaying relatively than telling of emotion was then practiced by way of an train that requested attendees to take traditional fables and switch them into dialogues, revealing the nuanced emotion in age-old tales.
Printed – January 18, 2026 08:18 pm IST
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