How do we remember the land when it no longer feeds us? Can theatre restore the smell of soil, the effort of bending down, the weight of the harvest? In The Harvest of Broken Promises, Indian director and performer Pankaj Tiwari weaves together personal memory and collective history to recount the transformation of agriculture in India since the 1990s, when the neoliberal opening to the global market marked an irreversible turning point. Raised in a farming family, Tiwari retraces the sustainable practices of his childhood and their gradual disappearance under the impact of multinational agribusiness, emblematic of a model based on genetically modified seeds and new forms of economic dependency. Through video, interviews, visual arts, and folk narratives, the performance moves between document and myth, between intimate and political dimensions. Testimonies from farmers across different parts of the world expand the personal narrative into a generational portrait. The Harvest of Broken Promises is a powerful work that interrogates the relationship between progress and survival, asking what remains when the land no longer remembers how to feed those who inhabit it.
Pankaj Tiwari is a contemporary artist, performer, performance maker, and curator originally from Balrampur, India. He currently lives in Amsterdam and holds a Master’s degree in Theatre from DAS Theatre Amsterdam. His work introduces Eastern perspectives into Western sociopolitical discourse. Pankaj Tiwari was also the recipient of the 3Package Deal award (2021–2022), granted by the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts. Between 2020 and 2023, he worked as a curator at Gessnerallee Zürich. He is currently the artistic director of Stichting Studio Current in Amsterdam.
Over the years, his works have been invited and supported by numerous international festivals and production houses, including MC93 Bobigny (2025), Kaaitheater (2024), deSingel in Antwerp (2023, 2024), Grand Theatre Groningen (2020, 2023, 2024), Spielart Festival in Munich (2023), Holland Festival (2023), Belluard Bollwerk in Fribourg (2023), wpZimmer in Antwerp (2023), Zürcher Theaterspektakel in Zurich (2020, 2023), University of Minnesota (2022, 2023), Radialsystem in Berlin (2022), Over het IJ Festival in Amsterdam (2022), Santarcangelo Festival (2020, 2021), Performing Borders Live in the United Kingdom (2020), Veem House for Performance in Amsterdam (2020), among others.
Performed by Pankaj Tiwari
Concept, creation, text: Pankaj Tiwari
Music: Nazanin Yelda
Video, sound and interviews: Prabhash Chandra
Text dramaturgy: Maria Dogahe
External eye: Pol Heyvaert
Production: CAMPO
Co-production: Kaaitheater
Developed with: Sommerfestival Kampnagel, Boulevard Festival, MC93
