We Go By Many Names

“We Go By Many Names is the story of Madhu, a forty-year-old transgender person living within Bombay’s hijra community, who longs to be united with her biological family. In doing so, she is betraying herself because she is longing for the very people who rejected her; this is her secret desire, and it goes against the tenets of her community. However, in this journey, she comes to love herself – all the while challenging the audience’s perception of what it is to be a trans person, a sex worker, a human being on the margins, who might be comfortable with being on the margins, and comes to think of it as a strength – not a weakness.” – Anosh Irani

Dramaturgy and process

Nightswimming commissioned Anosh in 2021 to create a dance/theatre work inspired by his acclaimed novel The Parcel, collaborating with him to find the theatrical voice of this story and bring the central character of Madhu to the stage through text, music and choreographed movement.

Anosh Irani has spent much of the past two decades building a very successful career as a novelist, but I always think of him first and foremost as a playwright and master of theatrical storytelling. I worked with Anosh on his first play, The Matka King, when I was Company Dramaturg at Factory Theatre twenty years ago. That script introduced Anosh’s unique playwriting voice, one that combines drama with hilarity – all in the context of social and political analysis that places marginalized characters on stage at the heart of his dramas.

Following that Factory Theatre workshop, Anosh and Brian continued to explore their love for the ways that dance can convey as much or more on stage than text, which led to a series of conversations about an idea that Anosh was developing: a story about a blind man who falls in love with a woman through the sound of her feet as she dances.

Nightswimming commissioned Anosh to write that play, Bombay Black, and our collaboration throughout the writing, workshop, rehearsal and production process was deeply satisfying. Bombay Black was a huge success, with the Cahoots Theatre premiere production receiving the Dora Award for Outstanding New Play.

Many years later, Anosh approached Nightswimming about creating a new work inspired by the characters of Madhu and Gurumai from The Parcel. It would once again focus on dance and physical movement to tell key elements of the story, draw on what we experienced creating Bombay Black, and ask us to venture into the unknown. We Go By Many Names is imagined as a large scale production with a cast of more than 20, with movement at its heart, with only enough text to ensure that plot and character are accessible and moving, and it tackles challenging ideas in a challenging milieu…the hijra community in Bombay’s red light district.

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More about the process of creation:

Nightswimming’s commission enabled Anosh to spend time with us dissecting his novel, identifying which elements to bring into the stage version, while uncovering new images and ideas that don’t appear in his novel and will be unique to this theatrical telling of Madhu’s life. Sessions in 2022 developed a first outline of the new piece, now called We Go By Many Names.

The process continued in 2023 and 2024 with a series of studio sessions during which Anosh created on his feet, using an improvisational approach to tell the story aloud, inventing details as he spoke. As the scenario for the piece evolved, Anosh began to describe not only text and dialogue, but also images, movement, props, staging, design elements and music as he told us the story over and over. He was not only telling Madhu’s story, her struggle with her biological mother, and with the leader of the hijra community, Gurumai; he was telling the story of the full production that was starting to take shape in his imagination.

Brian and Gloria annotated each telling, capturing details that added to and evolved the story. At the end of each set of sessions, we videotaped Anosh telling that version on his feet and then transcribed it so that we have a record of each version, which becomes the starting point for the next one.

Sessions in 2024 featured an invited presentation by Anosh to a small group of artists and organizations interested in supporting our work on this unique project. This form of improvisational creation continued in April 2025 with a focus on specific scenes, dance sections and moments between Madhu and her elder hijra Gurumai as they try to determine who will take on leadership of the hijra community following Gurumai.

The National Arts Centre Creators’ Intensive:

In August 2025 Nightswimming and Anosh participated in the Creators Intensive, a developmental process convened by the National Arts Centre English Theatre at the Banff Centre which featured four large scale projects-in-process. There we worked with acclaimed UK choreographer Aakash Odedra and composer Rushil Ranjan to begin to explore the physical and musical world of We Go By Many Names. Also central to this process was Vaibhav Saria, a professor at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University whose knowledge and experience of India’s hijra communities was vital to our creative work.

With the support of the NAC, this process launched our collaboration on the show with Aakash – who is a remarkable choreographer and a potent dancer – and Rushil, whose musical instincts for Anosh’s show were excellent and beautiful. Together they created more than 30 minutes of movement, dance and music that we integrated into a 80-minute presentation of the piece.

At the end of the Creators Intensive, 100-plus participants and guests attended our presentation of We Go By Many Names in Banff. Response from the audience was terrific, fueling our commitment to continue to weave dance, music and text together to bring the stories of Madhu, Gurmai and their community to Canadian stages.

Thank you to the NAC English Theatre for this opportunity to extend and expand the creation process for Names and for the opportunity to do so as part of this fabulous gathering of projects and artists.

Audience response to my novel has been my inspiration to find a new way to share the story of Madhu’s journey and bring it to audiences that might not otherwise experience her world. I see Madhu like an ancient Indian storyteller, clapping her hands the way the hijras do even today, gathering the audience around her, to tell her tale. She speaks with her body, her gestures, and then uses dance as a medium of expression – all the while being in cahoots, and in conflict, with the audience. If my book inspired people and changed minds, a theatrical version will be magical and even more immediate in its impact. – Anosh Irani

Collaborators

Brian Quirt (dramaturg), Gloria Mok, Nathaniel Hanula-James. Davinder Malhi. Jessica Watkin. Sierra Haynes.

NAC Creators Intensive 2025: Brian, Gloria, Sierra, Aakash Odedra, Rushil Ranjan, Abi Sampa, Vaibhav Saria, Gaurav Bhatti, Kodie Rollan, Jojo O’Neil, Amanda Colman.