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Watch: This provoking drama beautifully portrays the desire to belong to a place
Updated On: 14 January, 2024 07:23 AM IST | Mumbai | Christalle Fernandes
A new play coming to Mumbai’s stages looks at the undercurrent of identity crisis in the youth and their determination to forge a new country for themselves
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Rihla, directed by Neel Chaudhuri and featuring actors from Delhi’s Aagaaz Theatre Trust, asks what kind of country one would ideally love to belong to. Pics/Anant Raina
The idea that life is a journey is a common refrain put across by poets, philosophers, and writers, since aeons past. So, when we ask playwright and director Neel Chaudhuri about the title of his play, Rihla, on view at Harkat Studios in the upcoming week, it is apt that symbolises a journey. The Persian word, he explains, is not just about the journey itself, but also the literary account of that journey. “It was an appropriate title for this play, because the characters are on a quest that they document as they go along,” he says.
In 2016, Chaudhuri came across playwright Andreas Flourakis’ acclaimed play, I Want A Country, in New York. While it was based on the Greek economic crisis and its after-effects on the lives of people at an individual and collective level, the script of the play, he says, was “open”. “It could be applied to any nation where the citizens were going through a struggle of identity and belonging,” he recalls. “It’s a play about nationhood, identity, and people seeking to find community.”
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