Some stories do not need to be told in the same language to stir a shared emotion. A farewell, the fear of losing what we love, the relationship between parents and children, or the search for a place in the world can take different forms depending on the culture representing them. Yet when they appear on a stage, those differences do not necessarily separate people: they can also become an invitation to understand the other.

That is one of the possibilities theatre offers, and the bet India will bring to New Delhi from October 12 to 14 with the BRICS Theatre Festival 2026. Under the motto Shared Stories, Shared Futures, the gathering will bring together more than 100 artists, theatre professionals, academics, students and cultural representatives from nine countries: India, Thailand, Indonesia, Russia, Vietnam, Iran, South Africa, Kazakhstan and Ethiopia, according to India’s Ministry of Culture.

The program includes classical, contemporary and experimental theatrical forms, as well as workshops and conversations on stage traditions, acting methods, directing and technical design. This is not only about presenting works to foreign audiences. The festival also seeks to create spaces for exchange among those who create, research and keep different forms of performance alive.

The Stage as a Meeting Ground

Theatre has a particularity: a culture does not appear in it merely as a collection of symbols, costumes or customs. It manifests through bodies, voices, silences, gestures and conflicts. A tradition can be recognized in the music that accompanies a scene, in the way a legend is narrated, or in the relationship the characters establish with community, nature, family or the sacred.

For that reason, getting to know another country’s theatre can also be a way of approaching its history and its questions. It does not mean that a play allows one to understand a society completely, but it can open a door to what its members consider important, fear, celebrate or discuss.

Indian playwright and theatre historian Rustom Bharucha has devoted much of his work to analyzing encounters between cultures in the performing arts. In his reflections on intercultural theatre, he questions the idea that traditions can be moved from one context to another without tensions or transformations. His perspective invites us to recognize that each tradition has its own history and its particular ways of producing meaning, and that cultural dialogue requires attention to those differences rather than reducing them to an exotic or uniform image.

This warning is especially pertinent in a world that consumes cultural expressions from very different places, often through fragments, trends or stereotypes. Approaching another culture is not simply about observing what is different, but about asking what the thing we see means and from what history it is being told.

Traditions That Meet Without Ceasing to Be Different

The gathering of nine countries in New Delhi offers a stage for that conversation. Each delegation arrives with different theatrical languages, memories and experiences. The proposal is that these expressions can circulate, be observed by other audiences and enter into dialogue without all of them having to resemble one another.

That exchange also forces us to think about cultural identity in a less rigid way. Traditions are not immobile pieces preserved in a display case: they are transmitted, reinterpreted and coexist with new forms of creation. A production can recover an old tale and speak of a contemporary conflict; it can preserve elements of a local tradition while also engaging in dialogue with stagecraft developed elsewhere.

Cultural encounter, then, does not require erasing differences in order to find common ground. It can begin precisely when those differences become visible and cease to be a reason for distance. Sharing a stage does not mean telling a single story, but allowing several stories to exist at the same time.

In that sense, the festival’s bet is part of a broader conversation about cultural diplomacy: relations between countries are also built through exchanges among their societies, artists and audiences. The September 2026 BRICS Leaders’ Declaration recognized the value of initiatives such as theatre and film festivals in showcasing cultural diversity and strengthening ties between peoples.

But the value of theatre goes beyond its diplomatic usefulness. A work can represent a country without being obliged to sum it up; it can bring an audience closer to a tradition without eliminating every misunderstanding. Its power lies in offering a concrete experience: sitting before other voices and taking time to listen to a story we might never have sought out on our own.

At a time when international relations are often explained through agreements, figures, disputes and alliances, artistic encounters remind us that countries are also made of stories, practices and human experiences. Culture does not replace politics, nor does it resolve differences between societies by itself, but it can create spaces to understand them from another perspective.

Perhaps that is where the true possibility of theatre as a bridge lies: not in making us believe we are the same, but in allowing us to discover what we can understand about others without asking them to stop being who they are. When the lights go down and a performance begins, cultures do not disappear behind a universal story. They arrive in all their singularity and, for a moment, find a shared place.

Sources:
India’s Ministry of Culture: official announcement of the BRICS Theatre Festival 2026. BRICS Leaders’ Declaration, September 2026.