A review of Danish Sheikh’s Much to Do with Law, but More to Do with Love 

By Jennifer Cheuk | 4th March 2026

TRIGGER WARNING: This piece discusses violence against the queer community and trans people.

An empty stage and the audience is chattering, waiting anxiously for the performance to begin. The lights do not dim when lawyer and performer Danish Sheikh walks into view. People are unsure if the show has begun. Sheikh introduces the audience to the purpose of the play, to the genre, the form. He tells us what is fiction, and what is not , and I am struck by this opening. Sheikh stands there in the flesh, and the light is blinding. Talking directly to us, Sheikh makes sure we know not to suspend our disbelief. We are not entering another world: we are entering a very real and violent reality. He walks over to the lectern, and the lights dim. The performance begins. 

Much to Do with Law, but More to Do with Love explores India’s decades-long fight to repeal Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a colonial-era law that criminalises same sex relations[1]. Through a performance-lecture, Sheikh reflects not only on his role in this fight, but also on the role of the Law and lawyers. With this focus on the law, comes an inextricable focus on language. Sheikh’s central interest in Much to Do with Law is the use of language both within and beyond the law. How do stories, words and narratives simultaneously fail and honour a community? 

Aided by a creative team led by Director and Dramaturg Vidya Rajan, Designer Asha Barr, and Dramaturgical consultant Gabrielle Fallen, Sheikh uses sound, text, and design  to investigate these threads of language. While the stage is empty, a projection behind Sheikh displays an array of words. The audience can see the legal language of Section 377, we see emails, we see Courtroom transcripts, and we see the words of an affidavit submitted to India’s Supreme Court detailing the violent attack on Kokila – a trans woman. We see injustice. The deliberately sparse set forces us to consider the world-building capacity of legal language. For queer communities in India, the words of section 377 legitimize  violence, and Sheikh makes sure we know this at every turn. The words of Kokila’s affidavit permeate the space, projected onto the wall in front of us. The room is made of language and we cannot escape. 

What is particularly interesting about Much to Do with Law, is the use of performance as a mode of translation. Sheikh is aware of the cold, formal language of the law and he uses the multimodality of theatre to confront this fact. The show leaps between pop culture references and informal interactions with the audience. A consistent thread of Much to Do with Law is Sheikh’s love for Taylor Swift. I initially found this aspect somewhat jarring, and I struggled to reconcile Taylor Swift with the very real consequences of section 377. But…it’s all language, isn’t it? Sheikh points to how Swift rewrites Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet through her hit song ‘Love Story’, demonstrating the way language can alter traditional narratives. 

The performance also features  a fantastic moment where the words of Kokila’s affidavit are no longer projected in a formal sans serif font, but rather, in handwriting. It is terrifyingly intimate. Suddenly, we are brought closer to the person and the emotion behind this legal mechanism . The theatre becomes a site of metamorphosis. Through this performance, Sheikh reclaims  the legal language of queer injustice and translates “violent words” into resistance. 

However Sheikh is never dismissive of the law, and even explicitly tells his audience  that the law is his “great love story”. Sheikh asks us to listen to the language of the law: What has been lost? What has been found? And crucially, Sheikh asks us to have faith in the power of language – in law, song, or theatre – to rewrite histories.

Jennifer Cheuk 卓嘉敏 is a mixed Hong Kong Chinese/Welsh writer, curator and researcher from Aotearoa. She is the founder and editor of Rat World Magazine, and is currently in Naarm studying a Juris Doctor. 

[1] https://www.indiacode.nic.in/show-data?actid=AC_CEN_5_23_00037_186045_1523266765688&orderno=434