Theatre group No Drama, Please! stages ‘Khachar Pakhi’, a play on trauma and identity

In the caller Hindi play Khachar Pakhi, to beryllium staged successful Hyderabad connected November 8, the assemblage meets an anonymous pistillate — the cardinal fig connected signifier — yet the communicative isn’t astir 1 pistillate alone. “It is simply a communicative that resonates with galore women successful India who person experienced intersexual harassment oregon maltreatment and the trauma that follows,” says writer and manager Surendra Singh Negi.

The 90-minute play, performed by 3 actors, Adithya R, Seema Rajpal, and Shafaque Javed, marks the 4th archetypal accumulation by Negi’s theatre group. It spotlights the lingering effects of post-traumatic accent upset to the forefront. It opens with a pistillate gathering idiosyncratic successful a café, though it is ne'er revealed whether that “someone” is simply a woman, oregon adjacent live oregon dead. Through their conversation, the assemblage learns she erstwhile slapped a idiosyncratic during a occupation interrogation — the play unravels what triggered that enactment and, eventually, the crushed down it. “Through fragmented recollections and blurred boundaries betwixt information and illusion, the communicative underscores however trauma disrupts cognition and resists coherent representation,” says Negi.

The communicative unfolds done the dialog betwixt the 2 main characters and a waitress successful the café. Despite the constricted setting, the play remains gripping. Drawing from post-dramatic theatre, Negi employs dialog with deliberate gaps, intelligence shifts and layered imagery to conception a complex, non-linear narrative. “Traumatic stories aren’t ever told straight oregon realistically. People respond to trauma successful antithetic ways — hence the complexity,” helium explains.

Negi’s 2 decades of reflection and probe connected cases of intersexual harassment and maltreatment signifier the instauration of this play. “It has not been casual — neither for maine nor for the actors,” helium says.

Written successful Hindi, the play’s title, Khachar Pakhi — meaning “caged bird” — draws inspiration from a Rabindranath Tagore poem written implicit 130 years ago. The poem features a dialog betwixt 2 birds: 1 caged, the different free. “They sermon freedom, confinement, and the meaning of life,” explains Negi, who is besides a musician. “In this play, you spot a akin benignant of speech betwixt 2 women.”

Following its Hyderabad premiere, the play volition question to Chennai, Delhi, Bengaluru, and Bhubaneswar.

Khachar Pakhi, a play successful Hindi to beryllium staged connected November 8 astatine 8 p.m. astatine Lamakaan; Entry escaped