We are all as much a part of the solution as we are part of the problem

This interview between artist, educationalist and poet Tansy Troy and leading illuminem voice Praveen Gupta explores how theatre, poetry and painting can carry the urgency of the climate and biodiversity crisis, and why India's living traditions of reverence for nature may be a guide for the rest of the world.

Tansy Troy is an India-based educationalist, poet-writer, illustrator, performer, and maker of bird and animal masks. Currently working as Director of Performing Arts at Shrewsbury International School India (Bhopal), Tansy writes and illustrates while mentoring her pupils to become dynamic and passionate creatives in a climate that needs change more urgently than ever.

She firmly believes that art and creative expression is fundamental to the change we need to see in the world. She conceived The Apple Press, a young people's eco journal (@the.applepress) which includes poetry, stories, articles and artwork by creators as young as eight years old alongside household names in literature. The Apple Press is in its fifth year of publication.

In 2023, Tansy published her first collection of poetry, Ratnakosha (Red River Press), and thereafter was invited to contribute poems, articles and reviews to The Hindustan Times, The Hindu, Scroll India, Punch Magazine, Art Amour, Open Magazine, The Chakkar, Sanctuary Asia, Usawa, and Frontline. Her verse has been anthologised in The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2023, 2024 and 2025 (Pippa Rann, London) and The Tagore Anthology 2024.

She published her second collection, With Earth as My Witness (Red River), and third, Singing to the Eumenides (Writers Workshop), in 2025. Her forthcoming novel about the crisis on Great Nicobar, The Great Nicobar Journey, is published this month (June 2026) with Speaking Tiger/Talking Cub.

Tansy's watercolour illustrations have appeared extensively in Frontline and Green Lit Fest, and her larger-than-life bird and animal masks perform regularly on stages and at festivals across India.

As a performer for young people, Tansy nests at Triveni Kala Sangam (Delhi) and tours eco theatre productions around schools, theatres, galleries and festivals with her team of young actors and musicians. A recently acclaimed performance of Tara and the Great Nicobar Journey, performed in March at Triveni Kala Sangam, was celebrated in Frontline. In 2025, she worked as an ArtReach Fellow with the students of Udayan Care Home, and before that, for eight years at King's College India, Rohtak (Haryana).

Praveen Gupta (PG): Theatre, prose, poetry and painting: what's your first love?

Tansy Troy (TT): Argh! How could you make the first question so intensely difficult to answer, Praveen! You see, for me, all these expressive forms are so incredibly interlinked, interdependent, even. As a playwright, I create interactive, musical stories in which masked birds and animals invite an audience to be part of their tale. As a writer of prose, I am also very much concerned with creating works of fiction which inspire young readers to jump up and do stuff, motivational stories that change the world for the better. As a poet, I journey deep within, searching to resolve old tales I carry in my bones or to paint and sketch with words fleeting impressions of the scenes witnessed on this great journey. And as a painter, I become immersed in colour and detail and rhythm, but in a more special way than with words.

So I would not say that any one art form pulls me in more than another: each expression has its place and time and importance as a means of communication. My first love? The Earth herself. And everything I create, a song chanted back to her.

"My first love? The Earth herself. And everything I create, a song chanted back to her."

PG: What do you paint, and surely you do not stop there? Your artwork blends with theatre and publishing – how exactly?

TT: Yes, exactly – as above! I make masks by hand for the productions that I write and compose for, and also paint pictures of the endangered birds and animals represented in the dramas. These pictures get published as postcards on khadi paper and I sell packs of them at independent bookstores across India. So on the production side of things, there is this sort of constant flow from inspiration or urgent cause to material representation (in the form of poem, mask, watercolour, script, postcard, story) to product on bookshelves, in shops and homes or on the stage in the theatre or at festivals.

PG: Nature is a central and recurring theme?

TT: Yes. All work is a quest to support and celebrate her bounty, or to alert the world to her suffering.

"All work is a quest to support and celebrate her bounty."

PG: As a performer for young people – what is your focal point? How do you draw them in to perform and participate?

TT: I perform, or began performing, because it was the most practical way to get the tales and songs I was writing out there to an audience. Since working with troupes of young performers, it has become even more fun, since I get to direct a bit more and just join in from the side of the stage, more often than not accompanied by my long-time stage companion, tabla maestro Pranshu Chatur Lal. The 'drawing in' of both young performer, audience member and all the accompanying grown-ups is usually through music – song and body percussion – but also, critically, through theme and shared experience of an urgent cause on Planet Earth.

And yes, I write the initial scripts, but my performers inspire me to change and adapt the whole way through the rehearsal process, sometimes even to the day of the show itself, which can often be largely improvised. The lyrics of the songs are the only things that stay pretty much the same from the very beginning to the end of a production run. These often come to me in dreams or half sleep, along with the melodies of their songs.

"These often come to me in dreams or half sleep, along with the melodies of their songs."

PG: We are paying a hefty price for tampering with Nature and barely realise we owe everything to it. How does one convey that?

TT: Well, in a way, by continuing to bring awareness to the beauty and predicament of Earth at this present moment we all mutually inhabit. By finding ways to exemplify our interdependence, and also to bring out themes of compassion, friendship, teamwork and love as redemptive qualities we all share alongside avarice and ignorance, I hope the spectator, be they reader, viewer or audience, will understand that we are all as much a part of the solution as we are part of the problem.

PG: What is Tara and the Great Nicobar Journey about?

TT: This is the stage adaptation of The Great Nicobar Journey, the young people's novel I've just published with Talking Cub/Speaking Tiger. It tells the tale of a group of intrepid rare and endangered species of Great Nicobar who decide that they must journey to Delhi to make their voices heard and protest on the doorsteps of people who can make a difference.

"A powerful tale about friendship, resistance, and the fight to protect one shared planet."

PG: Isn't Climate a serious inter-generational issue?

TT: I mean, the good thing is that Climate is by now so central to our collective survival that every school curriculum in the world must engage with it wholeheartedly, scientifically and completely in order to inspire the next generations to come up with increasingly efficient solutions to our impossible and relentless exploitation of the very air we breathe, the very water we drink and the very earth from which we feed. We're all in this together, surely! But I would say that the younger generations definitely have a more acute awareness of the dangers we have put both ourselves and their future in, through sheer unbridled consumption and opportunistic exploitation of a finite (though infinitely patient) Earth.

"The younger generations definitely have a more acute awareness of the dangers we have put both ourselves and their future in."

PG: How does one invoke the powerful and diverse traditions of this country and leverage the sacredness of nature?

TT: Through theatre, music, painting and poetry! The wonderful thing about India, and the reason I can never bear to travel very far from her, is because she still has such a rich and living heritage of devotional art forms to express huge gratitude and awe of the wild world and all the beauty that encompasses. I am constantly inspired by miniatures, by the many weaves of fabric from different states, by the call to prayer and chant of mantra, by the curve of an antique statue in a remote shrine or temple, by forests where only very few humans have ever stepped.

The interconnectedness is still thriving and respected and understood in India. I find an awareness and trust in pretty much every place I go, from village to centre of bustling metropolis. It's worth talking about this, because the connect is still right here, and can be a massive example, therefore a hugely helpful guide to the rest of the world.

PG: Much appreciate these insights into your fascinating work, Tansy! May your creativity keep blossoming.

This article is also published on The Diversity Blog. illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy Thought Leaders, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.

Track the real-world impact behind the sustainability headlines. illuminem's Data Hub™ offers transparent performance data and climate targets of companies driving the transition.