Sometimes, the answer to life’s mysteries can be an absurd 42, if Douglas Adams’s science fiction Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is to be believed. At other times, it can simply be a ‘duck’!

Chasing My Mamet Duck, Chennai-based Evam’s take on playwright David Mamet’s The Duck Variations, was exactly that — vague and yet profound, with the duck becoming the metaphor for life. Staged at Vidya Mandir on Saturday evening, this “trans-theatre” experience — as the group likes to put it — had the audience first go through an intriguing set of off-stage exercises.

Entering Zone A, outside the auditorium, one delved into a world of wish trees, pinwheels that danced to the tune of hope and golden bags filled with objects for one to touch and feel. Intriguing?

Zone B was even more so. Turning Hamlet on its head, the play started with a segment on ‘silence’, bringing in all things absurd, chaotic and hilarious.

Director Karthik Kumar interacted with and pushed the audience on a path of discovery, while the short film Excess Baggage served as a commentary on modern life, and Anil Srinivasan’s piano strains filled the audi. Then came the brilliantly executed adaptations of Mamet’s work, played by T.M. Karthik and Yudhisthir Rana. Two men sitting in a park are discussing ducks — their eating to mating habits, leadership skills, coming and going, and the inevitable death. Each man tries to impose his views of the duck’s life on the other, inciting a debate laced with sarcasm, angst and humour.

Director Karthik returned for two more segments — Meaning is a Chameleon, a tongue-in-cheek tale on the pretensions and hypocrisy of man, and The Fabulous Human Race, a funny treatise on an alien’s view on the “nobleness” of the human species. The journey came to an end with Auction A Wish, where the audience was requested to contribute (though the cash was never collected) to fulfil the wishes of kids suffering from cancer and a challenged man dreaming of being independent.

November 19
A stand-up act by Anuvab Pal
Group: Rage
Venue: Vidya Mandir, 8pm
Chaos Theory
Group: Rage
Directed by: Rahul da Cunha
Written by: Anuvab Pal
The play: Based on the theory that two particles can attract each other and remain in a pattern without ever meeting, the plot lays the foundation for the question — can a man and a woman ever be friends?
Venue: Vidya Mandir, 8.30pm