India, Aug. 16 -- There is a moment in 'Bhirrr...', staged at The Tamaasha Studio recently, when the lights fade out and two saris, suspended in the air above the actors, seem to hold the entire weight of the play. Mayuri Ravindra, the deviser and performer behind the work, says she saw those saris long before she had a script, a cast, or even a title. "I kept seeing two saris suspended in space," she recalls. "I knew they belonged to this world."

It is how playwrights make theatre (with an image rather than an idea). And that's how the image of 'Bhirrr...' was born. It began in the fields and kitchens of a village called Abdullat, in Kolhapur district, where women have been singing for generations without anyone writing it down.

The ov...