Knockers, a one-person performance that walks straight into the quiet corners of illness, identity, and survival and turns on a light, is Theatre Nisha’s latest exploration of the human spirit.
For director V Balakrishnan, the impulse to create this piece arrived close to home. “My mother’s battle with breast cancer was the first,” he recalls. “Then three close friends, one of them my actor, went through it too. The tenacity with which they fought and stood tall stayed with me. That strength was a story that needed to be told.”
Balakrishnan has an affinity for the solo format, “I am most comfortable writing one person plays,” he says. “The format allows a level of intimacy that an ensemble, however powerful, cannot always achieve. A single body on stage makes the audience confront the character’s truth directly.”
The decision to handle the subject through fiction was both ethical and instinctive. “All stories in the play are fictional,” he clarifies. “I shared every draft with my team, an entirely women-led group, whose feedback was firm, honest, and essential. This was not a play I wrote alone. It was shaped, questioned, and built collectively.” Research, in his process, was not about accumulating testimonies but about listening to the right voices. “For Knockers, I had support from cancer survivors and my predominantly women-led theatre company. This play was not written at a desk. It was made over time, through listening, questioning, and witnessing.”
He further adds, “Knockers uses mastectomy and prosthetics to interrogate gender, body politics, and stigma. My characters relinquish expectations tied to breasts, gender, and binaries, navigating illness with humour and honesty.”
One of the most piercing ideas in Knockers is how society views survivorship. “A woman is often not seen as a woman after a mastectomy,” he remarks. “Survivorship gets flattened into clichés. Bravery, pink ribbons, sanitised narratives. In this play, women assert their right to be who they are, beyond symmetry and scars. The piece refuses silence. It refuses pity. It celebrates courage and humour.”
That celebration finds its vessel in actor KS Neeharika, whose emotionally raw performance anchors the piece. “She has trained rigorously,” says Balakrishnan. “She has proven her craft across several productions, and she brings depth, clarity and restraint, qualities essential for a role that demands precision.”
Some moments in the script were harder to inhabit than others. “The emotional state of the girl dreading her first intimate encounter after surgery was daunting to prepare,” she admits.
Unlike many actors preparing medical or trauma-driven roles, she avoided survivor testimonies by design. “The director was clear I was not to do that,” she says. “The script-making process was informed by real experiences. My job as an actor is to be the medium through which these stories can travel. I do not want to burden them with any trimmings.”
Ultimately, Neeharika hopes women who have lived through breast cancer find recognition and solidarity in her performance. “Support and strength,” she says. And for those without direct experience, she has another hope: “Stop dictating the female body.”
Tickets priced at ₹300. On December 13 & 14, at 4 pm & 7 pm, respectively.
At Alliance Française de Madras, Nungambakkam.
Email: shivani@newindianexpress.com
X: @ShivaniIllakiya
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