Nisha Abdulla will present a rehearsed reading of Abhishek Majumdar’s An Arrangement of Shoes, which won the TOTO in 2010, at Atta Galatta (178, 5th Main, 9th Cross, 1st Stage, Indiranagar, Bengaluru 560038) on Saturday, 25 November 2023 at 6.00 p.m. 

This is the final of three play readings which form part of a series of events that connect to young artists whose work TFA has encouraged and validated over the last 20 years.

About the Play:

A one-woman monologue which looks at the lives of Indian Muslims through the lens of twin sisters Rukhsar and Nisar, from the time of India’s Partition in 1947 to the present. An Arrangement of Shoes was Pick of the Fringe at the Vancouver Fringe Festival; performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival; the Exeter Fringe Festival; Cock Tavern Theatre, London; Acoustic Arts Festival; and the Ranga Shankara in Bangalore. It was also shortlisted for the Amnesty International Award at the Edinburgh Fringe and the Hindu MetroPlus Playwright Award.

The jurors for the 2010 TOTO for Creative Writing described the play as a ‘monologue that mines memory and strings reminiscences as it moves engagingly along the backdrop of small town northern India. In this world of a railway colony with its own makeshift cinema hall, Majumdar’s text gently dissects the lives of a family and the social order as if they were a fragile composition that could be altered by the unknown, by the unexpected, by even … the disturbance in an arrangement of shoes.’