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A scene from the play |
Has anyone seen her?” A woman beseeches as she rushes off the stage, thrusting an imaginary photograph of a girl at randomly selected members of the bewildered audience. This is how the play 64 Squares (Padatik, June 29) begins. Protagonist June Sen (played by Neha Mallick) is looking for herself, the self, which, she thinks, has got lost under the layers of life and living.
Her anguish is almost infectious, stirring up, as it does, familiar feelings, but it stops short. Hints of ‘acting’ prevents any real vicariousness.
Structurally, the play is a collage of pieces directed by different individuals. Theatrecian held a workshop and asked participants to come up with concepts and enact them. Each separate section was then woven together (supervised by Tathagata Chowdhury) into one play.
What emerged has the feel of a free-flowing narrative ? punctuated by flashback and fantasy. And characters from one section interact with those from another by means of different dramatic devices. Like the following dream sequence: Exhausted from her search, June Sen falls asleep in a park. She dreams. She is attacked by a man who has turned into a monster. The ‘man-monster’ episode is a separate exercise from the workshop directed and acted by Mohit Gourisaria.
Like the ‘self-searching’ episode of Mallick, this too delves into the psychological. And here too, sadly, the acting ?you are constantly aware of it ?imposes and stops you from connecting completely with that all too familiar feeling ? the terrible dilemma of the human mind which swings between the propensity for evil and the pursuit of divinity. But at moments, especially as the brute, Gourisaria sinks his teeth commendably into his character as his necrophiliac fingers sink unabashedly into flesh, moving over it ? through light and shade, silence and sound to create a fairly indelible image of brutish tactility.
64 Squares (the name is inspired by a game of chess) has the potential. But it doesn’t perform to its fullest. Characters are inspired by life, but actors ?with moments of exceptions ? don’t live that life, they act it.
So in the end you are left with the feeling that you’ve enjoyed a good game of chess, but you haven’t been checkmated.