Reflecting on community-based research with the transgender community in South India

Abstract

This paper examines how street theatre was co-developed and implemented as a form of resistance and community empowerment in collaboration with the transgender community in Chennai, India. Rooted in the community’s longstanding cultural practices of dance and performance, this project mobilized street theatre not only to elevate marginalized voices, but to challenge the enduring legacies of colonial and gendered state violence. Drawing on a community-based action research approach and Freirean pedagogy, the first author, an Indian diasporic social worker and emerging scholar, reflects on their role as facilitator and co-learner in this process. The paper presents street theatre as a culturally grounded, transformative practice that reclaims public space, asserts agency, and creates dialogic encounters with the broader public. It further explores how such research-community partnerships can disrupt dominant knowledge production and catalyze social and personal transformation.