Craving a unique dining experience? Attend a food theatre

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Theatre practitioners in India are using food in their performances to challenge existing oppressive structural injustices, such as casteism and patriarchy. In these food theatre pieces, playwrights weave together personal narratives and political messaging interspersed or bookended with a shared communal meal.

These include performances such as Come Eat With Me, Garam Roti and New India Lodge. A unifying theme is they break the fourth wall and invite members of the audience to share their lived experiences. Each performance is unique as the audience brings their own flavour and perspective to the show.

In Come Eat With Me award-winning Bengaluru-based Dalit theatre artist Vamsi Matta explores the relationship between caste and food over a shared meal. In this 110-minute performance piece, Vamsi with his rich, deep baritone narrates oral histories and personal anecdotes about the food he grew up eating, along with academic writing about caste. Explaining this approach, he says, “The mainstream discussion about Dalit food is largely about bodies brutalised by pain and hunger.

In Sanskrit, the word Dalit translates to broken people. Through my performances, I want to bridge solidarities and bring wholeness. I want to share how Dalit food can also be about joy and the everyday victories in the face of injustice." The performance concludes with a communal potluck featuring Vamsi’s mother’s comforting chicken curry as the centerpiece while audience members share their own experiences about casteism and gender discrimination in relation to cuisine.