it wasn't my fault
For this Girl of 25, life with Herself is always turbulent. This morning is particularly overwhelming. She is assaulted by self-doubt, unemployment, too much social media, and Her Mother.
But, She must brave the mundanity and frivolity of urban girlhood, all while searching for someone to blame.
This is the story of an ordinary day in Her life.
i killed my mother
I Killed my Mother / It Wasn’t my Fault is my effort to depict life on a bad day. In 2019, a bad day to me meant my mother being annoyed with me for some mysterious reason that had to do with my daily habits, unemployment, not having the willpower to get off my phone, and feeling a heightened sense of loneliness. The idea began and grew from investigating what is The War with the Self, wanting to write longform stream-of-consciousness, and questioning class privilege in young, urban women like me. The idea then grew at Indian Ensemble’s First Draft: Ideas Lab, where Chanakya Vyas, Karen D’mello, Abhimanyu Acharya, and a most wonderful cohort of fellow writers, witnessed its first iterations.
director's note
What followed was a lot of nudging and nagging from friends and family who believed in me when I wasn’t able to, some desperate attempts at changing careers, waves of a pandemic, and finally a push of self-assertion in the form of a grant from my alma mater, the Drama Schools Foundation Mumbai. What you see today is no longer just mine.
I Killed my Mother / It Wasn’t my Fault belongs to everyone on stage and off who has contributed to its telling, it belongs to frivolous women, it belongs to this new generation of youth, and it belongs to you who are watching it today.
team work
I Killed my Mother / It Wasn’t my Fault is the product of a collaboration between several artists who wear many hats as actors, producers and designers.
Check out their work!
playwright // director // producer Mallika Shah
executive producer // movement director // projection design Meghana AT
music & sound design Manish Khushalani
light design Adi Shastri / Yash Potnis / Amogh Phadake
visual design Malvika Dwivedi
light design for today's show Swachhand
production assistant Gargi Ajay Upadhyay
thank you <3
The making of this play would not be possible without our generous donors.
A big thank you to Alpana Shah, Anuja Ghosalkar, Aryan Tandon, Asha Khadaria, Fareen Jalal, Jyoti Mehta, Nirmal Shah, Sameer Shah, Sanghamitra Sengupta, Shiva Pathak, Smita Premchander, Virisila Buadromo, Yuki Ellias.
Other big pillars of support are the people who contribute to the show in resources. A subsidised venue, healthy meals, and physical labour cannot go un-thanked.
We are repeatedly in the debt of Kala and JJ Parekh, Kanchan and Prakash Thakur, Ganesh Jambhale, Rupali Bait, Samruddhi Halaye, and Sunil Mishra.
Big thank you to team MCC, and the folks at Bhasha Centre, District by Zomato, and the DSFM Niloufer Sagar Alumni Production Grant for making this show possible.
This play is supported by Bhasha Centre and district by Zomato under their co-production initiative – Manch.