For Manjari Kaul, queer feminist performer and director, even small things, like laughter, can be acts of resistance. Dramaturg Nisha Abdulla, on the other hand, says hope is a form of resistance. We are talking about the play Firefly Women, which Kaul directs and performs in with co-artiste Deepika Chauhan, and which Abdulla helped envision. It is in the city after a successful stint nationally and globally.

The play was first recorded as a solo digital show in several episodes, based on the letters that student activists Natasha Narwal and Devangana Kalita wrote while they were in jail. In 2022, Kaul began working on the first physical edition of the show, a duet, with Abdulla, sifting through the letters and transforming them into an episodic narrative.