Q. How did the idea of Darpana come about? When was it started?
A. Darpana was established by my father, space scientist Vikram Sarabhai and Amma (Mrinalini Sarabhai) in Ahmedabad. My dad handled the administration initially, while Amma was only the artistic head and didn’t really get into the administration part of things. For a while it was running on autopilot. I took over in 1977. Various forms like theatre, dance, puppetry co-existed at Darpana which we believe is an arts center where the arts meet society, to inform, educate and transform.
I realised that we had so many excellent teachers each of whom believed in using their medium for helping better our society and they were each individually doing it in their own areas of expertise. Kailash Pandya was doing it with theatre, Meher Contractor was doing it with puppetry and Amma was doing it with dance. We had so much talent and dedication under one roof. It was important to organise and channelise this so that we could put up acts that could involve these diverse mediums to bring about a change in our society. In 1980, we established Darpana for Development (D for D), to focus attention on creating behaviour change communication. Government departments, ministries and other non-government agencies began partnering with D for D to educate the public in issues of health, education and empowering women. Over the next two decades, D for D became the fastest growing segment of Darpana. We also worked with issues like TB and HIV in the 1980s.

Mallika Sarabhai performing Sita’s Daughter, a one-woman show that tells the stories of some of India’s bravest women