As a writer, before I start a project, I like to ask: “Whose imagination are we living in?”, “Who are we centring in this story?” And for Period Parrrty, I decided that I wanted to centre a non-binary Tamil teenager navigating their period party – a Tamil, coming-of-age ceremony that celebrates someone’s first period. Krish, our lead, is 15-years old, and although their mum means well in organising this ritual, she’s clinging to ideas of “respectability” and “womanhood” that don’t leave room for Krish’s gender or autonomy.
The seed for Period Parrrty came from some of my own experiences. I had a period party when I was 11-years-old. What I remember is the feeling of being loved – everyone was there to celebrate me and my future. But as I got older and came into my non-binaryness, I began to question the nature of the ceremony. The ritual, as well-intentioned as it was, carried expectations around cisness, straightness, and motherhood which ultimately weren’t right for me. Then a friend asked, “What if we created a queer period party?” And it felt like an invitation to rebuild tradition.
For me, queering the period party meant peeling away its gendered core and making it freer – a space for autonomy and curiosity. I realised that Tamil culture has always been queer; it’s colonialism that taught us otherwise. Before British law was imposed, transness and queerness were absolutely within our stories, our art, and our rituals in Sri Lanka. So Period Parrrty became a way of remembering and centring that. In Krish’s world, the party becomes a place to ask all the questions we’re told not to: about bleeding, dysphoria, pleasure, pain and bodies. Writing Period Parrrty was political and so was the choice to make it a queer Tamil romcom. I wanted to write the goofy, cute, teen angst and drama we feel when we first start crushing on someone. I also wanted to weave in Kollywood tropes that would delight my family and friends!
In terms of process, I began by jotting down fragments – snippets of conversations with my family, voice-notes from friends, Tamil proverbs and slang. Sometimes I’d write a monologue as a poem to find the start, the emotional core, and the end. I wanted my languages – both Tamil and English to dance around each other, like they do at home. Some of my favourite lines in the show are: “Is there even a Tamil word for non-binary? How is Amma meant to get me if I don’t exist in her language?” This sums up so much of what I wanted to say – that it’s almost impossible to share something if we don’t have the words for it. And that learning these words and passing them on is crucial to any movement for freedom.
I hope watching Period Parrrty is just the beginning. I’d love people to leave the theatre laughing, maybe tearing up, texting the family chat…but mostly imagining a freer kind of future – one where every party, and every ritual, has room for all of us.
Period Party runs from 23 October to 22 November, 2025, at Soho Theatre, 21 Dean St, London W1D 3NE, United Kingdom.
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