Largely unpopular among masses, street theatre is trying hard to retain itself in modern India. Popular media like Hindi cinema and cable TV is entertainment media, which by and large, produce a decadent and reactionary culture. Whereas, street theatre not only promotes a democratic, secular, and rational consciousness among the people but also provides robust entertainment without any cost. It is very close to reality. What is important is that it serves a social cause.

What street theatre aims at is towards sensitising masses to social issues, enrolling them in the process of social change and promoting peace and harmony. It does not necessarily provide answers to the issues raised, but tries to analyse the problems. Using humor it gives satire on current problems/issues.

Unlike theatre in the proscenium, street theatre entails minimum use of lights, cosmetics, costumes and other techniques. A character is established with a small but significant item of property, e.g., a stick to portray a policeman, which can even, be used as a shehnai, a stool/chair to portray king's throne etc. The actor achieves success with his voice, body language and eye-to-eye contact with the viewer. Episodic in structure, using choric dialogues quite often, street theatre combines music, song and dance.

Street theatre is people-friendly. The dynamic and mobile nature of street theatre, makes it possible to go to people where theatre is not accessible to the majority like streets, markets, slums, villages, schools, office complexes, parks, residential areas. It is a free show for every one, be it a shopkeeper, an officer, a labourer, a housewife or a student. Therefore, it never has a limited and repeat audience. With participants sitting at the same level as the audience, it shuns hierarchy. The unpolished performance gives it power to reach people. The shows are not ticketed, as the aim is not to earn money but convey the message by reaching out to people. Rather, the audience is asked for contributions.

Using participants' imagination extensively, the script emerges out of a series of discussions.

This not so popular form of media has a strong urge to break the system. It is often considered agitational propaganda against status quo. It raises a voice against harmful traditions like dowry, caste system, female foeticide etc.

With the potential to dramatise social, economic and political issues (hardly addressed by popular media) street theatre raises people's consciousness to an extent that the viewers may not do something but it hits their mind and they become aware.

The history of street theatre dates back to the 19th century when labourers and party workers wrote and did plays during the Industrial Revolution in Europe. Women also produced plays like "how the vote was won" during the suffragate movement in London at the beginning of the 20th century. Many productions came up during the Russian Revolution to reach illiterate people in remote areas. During World War II, street theatre played a role in whipping up an anti-war movement. Mid century also saw plays in America and England addressing the issues related to student's movement, women's movement, racial discrimination and the Vietnam War. The history of street theatre in India matches that of other parts of the world. Though folk artists in India have been doing jugglery, street magic, since ages, but tradition of folk theatre with revolutionary ideology started sometime after the first War of Independence when the message of patriotism and nationalism was spread. Indian People's Theatre association (IPTA), formed in 1943, was the first organised body to channelise progressive ideas, give correct picture of current problems like imperialism and suggesting solutions. IPTA became the pioneer of the people's theatre movement in India. With the passage of time themes changed from national consciousness to capitalism, peasant and labour movement, environment, communalism, Mandal, dowry, girl child sexual harassment, AIDS and globalisation etc.

Human right activists, students and women activists of various ideologies have used street theatre effectively. Alarippu, Action India, Jagori, Jan Natya Manch, Pravah in Delhi, Asmita in Hyderabad and many more all over India have produced plays from time to time on different issues.

Om Swaha, Aurat, Roshini and Ahsaas, produced by Delhi-based women activists focused attention on social, economic and emotional dynamics of dowry, discrimination and maltreatment of women, became very popular in the late seventies. Many more plays on domestic violence, wife-beating, sexual harassment challenged glorification of family as a secure place and demonstrated how family regulations, traditions and relations bind women and become a hurdle in her over all growth. Similarly, in the wake of communal riots in 1984 and 1992, human right activists produced plays hitting fundamentalism/fanaticism and politics behind it. Women activists extended the plays by showing its repercussions on women.

Fortunately, Punjabis also have had a taste of this form of media produced by Gursharan Singh, Munna Dhiman, G.S.Channi, Harleen Kohli, Zulfiqar Khan and others. Plays like Main Jala Di Jaon Gi, Ghutti Hawaon Ka Sanaata, Aurat on women's issues, Khichri, Natkhat Kanhiya and Hai Meri Poonch for children, Akh Di Dehliz on communalism and Toa, have been produced by artists in Chandigarh.

Gursharan Singh known as 'Samrat of nukkad natak' represented Punjab in historical street theatre festival in Bhopal under the name of Amritsar Natak Kala Kendra. Jangi Ram di Haweli (a satire on the election system), Inqlaab Zindabad (on Bhagat Singh) and Tamashaie Hindustan (on Indian bureaucracy) were produced after a 10-day-long workshop and staged in the streets of Bhopal. Gursharan Singh says: "My plays are political. I interpret politics with strong communist ideology. In fact, street theatre started with leftist ideology, which may not be true for all theatre groups at present but all are essentially working for a cause". His play Takht Lahore, staged during the Emergency was responsible for his going to jail for 48 days.

His two recent plays are worth mentioning here. Laare is about chief minister Badal's promise (that he made during his election campaign before coming to the present term) to give old age pension to every man above 65 and every woman above 60 years in Punjab. Another play Raj Maharaja Ranjit Singh Da Urf Inaam is a satire on Badal's policy of eliminating corruption in Punjab by declaring a cash prize of Rs 25000 to 50000 to any one providing proof of corruption.

Theatre groups in Chandigarh like Theatre Age, Chandigarh School of Drama, Chetna and CEVA have extended the concept of theatre to community theatre, which gives participants an opportunity to explore their inner selves, i.e., their pains, desires, aspirations and capacities, to dismantle their previous pattern of self-perception and of interaction with others. "Community theatre is an exciting and dynamic process that serves to impart a certain degree of confidence, self-assurance and self modification for those who agree to become part of it", says Harleen Kohli of CEVA. She contends, "Community theatre gives magic space wherein one can 'be' what one wants." Zulfiqar Khan, who does theatre with slum children, strongly feels that poor children's involvement in theatre gives them enormous confidence and knowledge which they are unable to acquire even through school education. It is a process of empowering (for those who become part of it) of shedding inhibitions, taboos, of identifying, acknowledging, internalising and then externalising their own reality, thoughts and perceptions. Community theatre is a two-way learning process where facilitators also learn from the experience of the participants (community). All this enriches the whole process of creating theatre.

"Though transformation of the whole process into a concrete play is performed in public but that is not the final objective. This exercise is more for the participants than for the audience though the issue is addressed to the viewers", says theatre director Munna Dhiman.

For one of the participants, Vidwant Kaur in her late fifties, "It has been a process of self-reflection and growth".