Indradhanush: A Kommune Special is making a stop in the city where its story truly begins Lucknow. Roshan Abbas, the man behind this deeply personal solo show, isn’t just performing in another city on his India tour. He’s coming home.
Event Details:
Venue: Jaipuria Institute of Management, Lucknow
Date: Sunday 20 Sep, 2026
Time: 6:30 PM
Duration: 1 hour and 30 minutes
Ticket Price:₹499 onwards
Tickets available: BookMyShow
What Is Indradhanush: A Kommune Special by Roshan Abbas
At its core, Indradhanush is Roshan Abbas’s debut solo storytelling and memoir performance, something he had never attempted in his multi-decade career across radio, television, live events, and theatre. Abbas is widely recognized as a pioneer of Indian radio and TV hosting, and as the co-founder of Kommune, the performance arts collective he built with Gaurav Kapur and Ankur Tewari. For the first time, he steps onto a bare stage not to host or produce someone else’s story, but to tell his own.
The performance is described as a “live memory broadcast,” and it’s built around a metaphor his father gave him as a child: that life is like a rainbow, and the rain that comes with it isn’t a flaw in the deal instead it’s part of the deal.
The Roshan Abbas Lucknow Connection at the Heart of Indradhanush
What makes this particular stop on the Indradhanush tour especially meaningful is that Lucknow isn’t just another venue for Roshan Abbas, it is where his story starts. Abbas was born and raised in Lucknow, the son of educators who instilled in him an early love of learning. He studied at La Martinière College, Lucknow, where he threw himself into extra curriculars, elocution, debate, and dramatics, laying the foundation for the storyteller he would become. It was only after finishing school in Lucknow that he moved on to Delhi for his further studies and eventually built his career in Mumbai’s media world.
That upbringing runs directly through the show. The narrative arc of Indradhanush traces his life from his childhood in Lucknow, through his college years, and into his early days in media, meaning the city audiences will watch him perform in, is also the city he’s performing about. For Abbas, returning to Lucknow with this show is less like a tour stop and more like closing a loop, revisiting the streets, memories and people who shaped him before he ever picked up a microphone professionally.
From Laughter to Vulnerability: The Defining Moment Behind Indradhanush
Indradhanush balances two things that rarely sit comfortably together: high-energy humour and genuine vulnerability. Abbas fills the show with lighthearted stories of “bad bets” and mishaps but he doesn’t shy away from nostalgia, identity, and the harder parts of growing up and growing older.
A major turning point behind the show’s creation was a serious health crisis Abbas faced last year, which reportedly saw him being wheeled into surgery. That experience is widely cited as the catalyst that pushed him to stop building stages for other storytellers through Kommune and finally step onto one himself.
The result blends fact and imagination into a theatrical format that invites the audience to find pieces of their own memories inside his. Abbas has spoken about how the show taught him that audiences don’t necessarily connect with scale but they connect with specificity. A story rooted in one boy’s Lucknow childhood becomes, in his words, a mirror for the people watching it, regardless of where they grew up.
Coming Home: Why This Indradhanush Stop Feels Different
For longtime followers of Roshan Abbas’s work with Kommune, seeing Indradhanush performed in Lucknow adds a layer that other tour stops can’t quite replicate. It isn’t just a show about nostalgia, it’s nostalgia performed on home ground, in front of an audience that may recognise the very streets, schools, and city rhythms he’s describing.
Whether you’re familiar with Abbas’s career in radio and television or discovering him for the first time through Kommune, Indradhanush: A Kommune Special offers a rare, unscripted look at the life behind the storyteller, a 90 minutes of laughter, honesty, and a reminder that the rain was always part of the deal.
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For those planning a full evening around the show, the city’s café culture makes for a fitting pre- or post-show ritual so check out some of the rooftop best cafes in Lucknow to pair with your Indradhanush outing.
