In this article, the author examines how a pedagogical and creative practice in one school for lowest-caste girls in Lucknow, India, is harnessing the imaginative affordances of theater--in particular, its ensemble-building and its capacity to hold the present open for investigation--to leverage these practices for understanding the political economy and deconstructing the structural forces of gender oppression in times of growing social and economic inequality. The concept of social innovation has, over recent years, provoked much academic and policy debate across a range of disciplines, yet it has been relatively under-studied in the field of education. This article makes a case for theater specifically, and education more broadly, as a critical driver of social innovation and change, and uses an empirical example from ethnographic research in Lucknow, India where the ongoing gendered oppression of young women urgently calls for radical societal reform.