THOUGHT FACTORY: A REVOLUTION BREWING IN THE BURBS

by Vinta Nanda March 29 2025, 12:00 am Estimated Reading Time: 6 mins, 18 secs

A stunning showcase of six bold one-act plays, The Micro Theatre’s Set A captures the voice of Mumbai’s youth—raw, relevant, and revolutionary—led by young creators Jahaan Singh and Rayaan Khatib. Vinta Nanda looks back at the riveting evening she spent at Mukti Manch.

The Micro Theatre’s Set A, performed at Mukti Manch in Mumbai on March 15, 2025, is a powerful collection of six one-act plays created and directed by emerging talents like Jahaan Singh and Rayaan Khatib. With sharp writing, exceptional performances, and a fresh take on contemporary issues—ranging from digital disconnection and urban relationships to political satire and societal norms—this festival showcases the best of independent theatre in India. The Micro Theatre is redefining live performance for new-age audiences, making theatre accessible, fast-paced, and deeply relatable. Don’t miss this cutting-edge theatre movement lighting up stages across Mumbai.

If it wasn’t for Karan Ghosh—a musician, singer, and actor—I wouldn’t have stumbled into an alternate reality nestled deep in suburban Mumbai. A place where theatre is alive, raw, electric, and unfiltered. Where a young generation of artists is fearlessly rewriting the language of storytelling—ten minutes at a time.

It’s March 15, 2025. Karan’s mother and I head to Mukti Manch, a venue I hadn’t visited before, expecting something different. What I get instead is something transformational. Outside the auditorium, I bump into Charu Singh—an old colleague from my Zee Network days—who tells me that her daughter, Jahaan Singh, is one of the brains behind the evening’s performance. Jahaan, with her late father and my contemporary Rituraj Singh’s spirit guiding her, co-leads The Micro Theatre alongside Rayaan Khatib. I'm intrigued. I enter the space. The lights dim. The show begins.

And suddenly, the noise of a thousand recycled Bollywood plots fades into irrelevance.

Six Explosive One-Acts: Set A

What unfolds in front of my eyes is nothing short of a theatrical miracle. Six one-act plays, each barely 10-12 minutes long, yet each bursting with clarity, craft, and courage. Every performance is a punch to the gut. Every line of dialogue feels like it was overheard on a Mumbai train or inside a Gen Z WhatsApp group. These plays aren’t just relevant—they're urgent.

Set A of The Micro Theatre Festival featured six sharply crafted one-act plays, each bringing a distinct flavour and voice to the stage. Airplane Mode, written and directed by Divya Kalati and starring Atherva Kelkar and Aafiya Sayed, offered a brilliantly minimalist take on disconnection in our hyper-connected world. U Up?, by Rhea Vijay with performances by Sachin Lalwani, Nysha Bijlani, Mehr Juneja, and Jahaan Singh, spiralled from a simple late-night text into a raw exploration of longing and digital vulnerability. Soham Pujara’s The Bomb Has Been Planted, featuring Satvik Bhatia and Rishab Joshi, was a darkly comic satire laced with sharp political commentary. In Bedbugs, written and directed by Ishita Karra and performed by Jahaan Singh and Rayaan Khatib, love and emotional infestation became metaphors for tangled relationships in a tightly woven two-hander. Talk Therapy, by Adiraj Singh with Fardeen Khan and Ronit Sarawgi, used dry humour and piercing insight to explore masculinity and the modern psyche. Finally, Arrangement, written and directed by Jasmin A Singh and starring Rayaan Khatib and Kelly D’lima, offered a quiet yet cutting dissection of societal expectations through a deceptively simple dialogue between two individuals navigating marginalisation and privilege. Karan Ghosh, Kay D’Lima, and Riddhi Goenka delivered seamless live music, effortlessly transitioning between varied background scores and songs performed on stage.

By the end of the sixth one-act, I was stunned into silence. My first thought: I want more. My second: Why isn’t this dialogue in our mainstream, because it is relevant? My third: After having watched Adolescence on Netflix, it’s become urgent for us to listen to the voices of young people.

The Origin Story: Artists Without the Spotlight (Yet)

In a follow-up phone call with Jahaan and Rayaan, I got to know them beyond their brilliance on stage.

Jahaan spent nearly a decade in New York—studying, working with The New York Times, absorbing its artistic pulse—before the pandemic nudged her back to Mumbai. She continued working remotely while nurturing her artistic roots in theatre. Rayaan, an engineer by degree, also returned from the U.S., but with a fierce passion for performance and storytelling. Together, they regrouped with friends, all juggling day jobs, and carved out Micro Theatre in 2022—not just as a performance space, but as a creative movement. Today, Rayaan is working in the field of medical equipment and Jahaan freelances as a writer and works with ed tech startups based in the US (to fund the artist life).

The idea behind Micro Theatre was radical: make theatre inviting not just for regulars, but for those who’ve never stepped foot in a black box. Each season features six independently directed short plays, fast-paced, locally grounded, and refreshingly unpretentious. In just three years, they've staged seven seasons, performed at NCPA, G5A, Rangshila, and taken their productions across the country.

They now boast a collection of 40+ short plays—each one an experiment in form, emotion, and meaning.

Where Is the Talent, You Ask? It’s Right Here.

I work in an industry where the most repeated line in every boardroom and outside of it is: “Where are the writers? Where is the talent?”

Well, here they are.

Young. Brilliant. Raw. Brave.

They're writing, directing, acting, and reshaping the narrative. They’re not trying to chase stardom—they’re trying to find the truth.

And thank god the paparazzi isn’t chasing them yet. Because unlike the nepo-kids dodging camera flashes and chasing screen time, these kids are chasing something far more valuable: authenticity. If the glare of media ever finds them, I only hope it doesn’t burn them out before they’ve finished building the revolution they’ve started.

The Micro Theatre is where the real stories are being told. Where the real future of storytelling is being shaped. If talent scouts, casting directors, studio heads, and filmmakers aren’t watching this—they’re missing the movement entirely and thus making the industry more redundant.

And to the "nepo-kids"—I hate the term too, but let’s face it, it exists—I say this: before you face the camera, face a live audience. Go through Micro Theatre. Let those 10 minutes on stage shape you. It’ll do more for you than a thousand Insta reels. It’ll save our cinema. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll save our society.

This Weekend, G5A. Be There.

This weekend, The Micro Theatre Festival celebrates its 3-year anniversary with both Set A and Set B performing at G5A Warehouse.

G5A Warehouse

Limited seats! Book now:

https://www.district.in/micro-theatre-festival-mar29-2025/event?disableSSR=true

I urge anyone who cares about storytelling, who’s hungry for originality, or who’s just plain tired of being served the same cinematic leftovers—go. Witness what real, independent, homegrown, contemporary theatre looks and feels like.

Jahaan Singh and Rayaan Khatib, you’ve lit a spark. May it spread like wildfire.