Children from Narikurava community in Pallavaram as ‘commentators’ in a puppetry production on environmental degradation

Want to understand your city? Try travelling from one end of it to the other. On July 18, fifteen children from the Narikurava community in Pallavaram had the privilege of doing that kind of cross-city travel thanks to “Toxic Tour” organised by Agai – Theatre of Voices in collaboration with Vettiver Collective and Chennai Climate Action Group. These children were being introduced to the industrial north of Chennai where tall chimneys mark the skyline. For the first time, they were setting eyes on thermal power plants, oil refineries and the Adani Port. 

At every turn, the children learnt how development was impacting people’s everyday lives; more specifically, breathing polluted, toxic air into those lives. This was no awareness tour. The children were wearing the researcher’s hat, filing away information for Enge Engal Nadhigal (Where Are Our Rivers?), a year-long puppetry production that has children taking centre stage as storytellers, writing their own scripts. 

Architect of this initiative, Agai —Theatre of Voices is a young Gen-Z Chennai collective that seeks to provide a collaborative platform for their own (that is, other members of Gen Z) to work towards social and environmental justice. The philosophy is hardly accidental. It mirrors the journeys of its founders, Tittu (as he prefers to be known) and Nambi Srinivas, both trained social workers whose paths first crossed at the Madras School of Social Work. While Tittu went on to pursue a postgraduate degree at Christ University, Bengaluru and Nambi specialised in community development, theatre became the language that united them long before Agai formally came into existence in 2023. For Tittu, social work dismantled not only career choices, but inherited beliefs. For one, “it made me question the idea that we have to speak for communities.” That conviction deepened after Tittu was selected for Kanthari, the international leadership programme in Thiruvananthapuram, where he was among only three participants from India. There, meeting Sabriye Tenberken, founder of the first blind school in Tibet, re-moulded Agai’s ideological compass. “We completely reject the phrase ‘voice of the voiceless’,” he says. “Everyone already has a voice. What people need is someone willing to listen.” And that is Agai’s guiding principle now, one informing its initiatives including the programme for the children from the Narikurava community in Pallavaram. 

Agai has been working with these children for two months now. No rigid lesson plans; not compulsory practice sessions. Much of the time has simply been spent sitting with the children, making puppets and just talking. Only after that comfort began to emerge did stories begin to surface.

“Once we gave them the puppets, they started speaking automatically,” recalls Tittu. “Nothing was prompted. We did not expect it. One child spoke about forests. Another spoke about the River Ganga, even though she has never seen it. The puppets became a space where they could say things adults never asked them.”

Those stories will eventually become Enge Engal Nadhigal. Over the coming year, the children themselves will shape the script, perform it and later travel to different parts of Chennai, and eventually other cities using theatre to tell audiences about disappearing rivers, environmental degradation and the worlds they inhabit.

The process matters as much as the performance. “Getting children to stay with us for even one hour is difficult,” says Tittu. “One place they do not want to go is school. So we do not recreate school. We do not ask them to sit quietly and listen.” Instead, Agai asks adults to do something considerably harder: to listen. 

Says Srinivas: “We are simply doing small things and going with the flow.” That “flow” has become Agai’s operational term. 

For Nambi Srinivas and Tittu, going with the flow would mean creating “a forest-based learning space where children enjoy education. We do not want them to adapt to a system. We want to build a system that grows with them.” Part of that would be photography programmes, football coaching for tribal youth and creative learning rooted in local knowledge rather than imposed ideas. It is an ambitious vision for a collective that admits financial uncertainty remains its greatest challenge.

The spirit of collaboration

Agai — Theatre of Voices works alongside organisations such as Vettiver Collective, Chennai Climate Action Group and Open House, sharing skills, resources and campaigns rather than guarding ownership.

It is also one of the organisations behind March for Marshlands, a rally scheduled for July 25 at Besant Nagar Beach. Bringing together more than 20 organisations and citizens across Chennai, the rally calls for the conservation of the city’s marshlands and stronger action against encroachments and ecologically unsound construction projects, particularly the proposed Mammalam Reservoir project. 

Agai also runs a tribal education programme in the Nilgiris, supports digital comics on child rights, operates the Agai Stellar Band that produces music around environmental themes, and conducts youth outreach programmes that introduce urban students to tribal communities through shared experiences instead of surveys and statistics.