Irshad 2025: Stories from Bargad Fellowship

Hello everyone! After four months of learning, reflecting, and training, the Bargad Fellowship has reached its final unit, the Creation Month. Things have started to shift. The space has turned into many things at once: a laboratory, a blank canvas, a writers’ room, and, as always, a place to rehearse and have fun.

Our 14 fellows have begun developing their own performances - original, devised pieces drawn from their lived experiences and the questions they carry. Each day has been filled with improvising, writing, rehearsing, making mistakes, and trying again. The process has held uncertainty, but also built momentum.

Mentors Dhwani Vij and Savita Rani have been walking alongside the fellows through this time. Together, they have shaped stories that feel meaningful to them and to us all.

Irshad is what we’ve chosen to name the annual sharing of the Bargad Fellowship, an event we hope will become a regular part of the Delhi theatre calendar. Irshad is a space for reflection and pause, a moment to witness the work that’s come out of this collective process.

THE PERFORMANCES

Jugnuon ki God Mein

Between really knowing someone and believing what we’re told, there lies a fine thread - spun by an unseen mediator. This middleman meddles, spins us in circles, whispering stories and myths until we forget ourselves. To truly know someone, their presence is essential, conversation is essential, without this invisible interference. Our play weaves itself around this very thread, tugging at its ends, trying to uncover the face of the one who stands in between.

Kacchi Chhat

Home - a word we know so well - is, in truth, a feeling deeply etched within. It’s built from the delicate threads of memory, often found in the quietest corners of who we are. Through questions like Where do we feel at home? and What do we want to make home? Our play explores this tender, inner terrain. In the process, we discovered that home is not just a place - it is a landscape within, largely uncharted, and profoundly mysterious.

Irshad 2025 holds these stories, shaped over months, in shared space. This is where we are now. And this is what we make together.