Text from SPARROW:
Mangai is the pseudonym of Padma who is a theatre director and a Professor of English Literature in Stella Mary’s College, Chennai. As a member of All India Democratic Women’s Association and Chennai Kalai Kuzhu Mangai actively took up several issues relating to women and presented them in the form of street theatre and stage plays. Later she became the key person in a theatre group called Voicing Silence that is being supported by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Centre. This group has scripted and enacted a range of issues from female infanticide to recasting women characters from epics. Mangai has scripted and participated in some of the plays and has directed some of the plays presented by the Voicing Silence group. Her Tamil plays raise many issues on gender, theatre and language that belong to debates within feminism.