‘Radio Live’: a moving, conversational portrait of a young Indian activist

Friday night at 8 p.m., I settled into my seat in the Wallace Theater of the Lewis Arts complex for what would be one of the most thought-provoking live performances I have ever seen. On a stage set to resemble a radio studio, the small team of “Radio Live — La Relève” presented a moving portrait of Sumeet Samos, a young Dalit activist and scholar from India, and his experiences within the Indian caste system. The show was simultaneously a natural conversation and a well-choreographed story. The dialogue, combined with artistic visuals and music, held me captivated from the opening welcome to the poignant finale.

“Radio Live – La Relève” came to Princeton as part of the University’s annual French theater festival Seuls en Scène, which runs for 10 days in September. The program partners with Festival d’Avignon, a historic arts festival held in Avignon, France, to bring talented actors, directors, and artists to the Princeton community for a taste of the best French productions. While some Seuls en Scène shows are performed in French and provide English supertitles, “Radio Live” was the only performance this year in English, likely in an attempt to appeal to a broader audience. Though most attendees conversed in French during the pre-show chatter, as a French novice, I was grateful that the performance would be in English — allowing me to fully immerse myself in Samos’s story.

“Radio Live” is exactly what its name suggests: live, in-person radio, complete with a live musician, visuals, and — most essential to radio — live interviews. Each installment of the “Radio Live” series focuses on a young person from around the world, fostering long-term dialogue between young activists — in this case, Samos — and the radio’s listeners. Though the show was edited and rehearsed to allow for video clips of interviews with Samos’s family, music breaks, and other visuals, the conversation between one of the show producers, Aurélie Charon, and Samos retained an organic quality. Occasionally glancing at her notes, Charon guided the conversation with casual yet heartfelt questions that prompted Samos to delve deeply into his childhood spent in the untouchable caste system in India, his spontaneous moves — first to New Delhi and later to Oxford — and his activism as a rapper and scholar.

This conversational simplicity made the show so fantastic. On a relatively empty stage, Samos and Charon filled the space with their impeccable stage presence. It helped that Charon never asked more than what was needed, never cornering Samos nor the audience into a pre-concluded answer. Though Charon had a script, Samos only held a microphone, ensuring that his answers were truly authentic. At one point, he even rapped to the audience. In short, the conversation seemed guided yet unscripted, allowing Samos to paint an authentic, powerful image of a hierarchical India for the audience through his emotive storytelling.

In addition to the central conversation with Samos, the show filled gaps within the conversation with recorded interviews with his mother, father, younger brother, and younger female cousins, as well as video clips of the places where he grew up. The family interviews added multigenerational depth to Samos’s own life journey and his explanation of the Indian caste system. Particularly moving were the interviews with Samos’s two younger female cousins, who dreamed of careers in science and medicine but were held back by the generational effects of the caste system, as well as the stories that his parents shared about teaching and practicing medicine in his childhood village, demonstrating the tenacity required to exist within the lower castes. Shots of Samos’s small, rural childhood village added yet another layer to the performance, especially since Samos shared that he had not been back to the village since he was a teenager until recording “Radio Live,” allowing for an unfiltered perspective of his home. I was impressed with the extensive travel the show undertook to create a well-rounded picture of life in India. My amazement only grew when I learned during the post-show Q&A session that the “Radio Live” team had been working with Samos since 2017 to produce this 70-minute piece of art.

The show would not have been a true work of art if not for the musical and visual elements of production — traditionally kept backstage — that complemented and enhanced the conversation. On stage, live musician Emma Prat performed songs in numerous languages while singing and playing guitar. At times, she overlaid her voice with pre-recorded clips to create musical interludes between recordings and dialogue that paralleled what one may hear on a radio show like NPR. In the Q&A, Prat told the audience that she listened to clips of traditional Indian tunes that Samos sent her in order to put together the music for the performance. The carefully selected and composed music complemented the discussion, adding cultural sounds that further immersed the audience in the story.

Though not a traditional part of radio, I was particularly intrigued by the visual artistry of the “Radio Live” show. In keeping with the conversation’s simplicity, the visuals were mostly subtle, mostly consisting of changes in lighting and drawings shown on a projector screen behind Samos and Charon to illustrate key points of their conversation. We could actually see the artist, Gala Vanson, drawing the images that would be projected onto the screen from her computer in real time. On stage, the oversized, brightly-colored microphones used by Charon and Samos added an element of funk to the show, emphasizing its youthful roots. A simple map of Samos’s village, created on the stage floor with tape, as well as the finale, in which Samos stood underneath the smiling, blinking, recorded faces of all the generations which shaped his life in India, was incredibly emotionally moving.

I was impressed and inspired by the collaboration between the “Radio Live” production team and Samos, and found the artistry, conversational style, and development of Samos’s story through the show to be quite poignant. I walked away eager to understand more about life in India and look forward to meeting a new featured artist through the next episode of “Radio Live” when it returns to Seuls en Scène in 2025.