Indigo Giant is a new drama from Komola Collective, written by Ben Musgrave and produced by Leesa Gazi.
Love and Revolution meet in this story directed by Gavin Joseph that sheds light on a forgotten moment in British history.
During the British Raj, in order to meet the world's insatiable desire for the blue dye to feed the textile industry vast swathes of the Bengali countryside were given over to the cultivation of the indigo plant.
Farmers were forced to give over land to cultivate this crop and atrocities committed by British triggered an extraordinary revolution that changed Bengal forever.
1859. A field in Kanaipur, Bengal. Life-loving Sadhu Charan, an indigo farmer, is newly married to Kshetromani, a woman with visions of the future. At first, all is idyllic.
But when Rose, the new British Planter, arrives, full of strange desires, the creeping malignancy of the indigo system begins to strangle their happiness.
Featuring cast of six actors, music and movement, this drama emerged out a dialogue between British & Bangladeshi theatre makers and is inspired by Dinabandhu Mitra's trail-blazing "Nil Darpan" Indigo Mirror (1860) a play that shook colonial India.
The intersecting story line of Indigo Giant connects the threads to present day desire for fast fashion where exploitation continues unabated with cheap labour and harmful environmental consequences.
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