A Work-in-Progress Presentation of A Mongoose Speaks at Calderwood Pavilion

Growing up in India, playwright Mahira Kakkar found live performances of the Mahabharata spellbinding; now she’s creating a bold cycle of plays that center the epic’s forgotten voices and overlooked characters.

In A Mongoose Speaks, a little mongoose bears witness to a sacred sacrifice and he’s changed. His fur turns gold; his silence breaks into speech. No longer fully animal, not yet something else, he is caught half-transformed — uncertain and becoming. Told in lyrical dialogue alongside a live tabla player, the story is a funny and surprising exploration of selfhood, sacrifice, and the desire to evolve again and again into something more.