Peter Brook calls it a 'formless hunch': the impelling force, which could be a smell, an image, a colour or a shadow, that drives one to breathe life into an idea or theme or text. Taraye Taraye, a play directed by Koushik Sen, adapted from Srijato Bandopadhyay's novel, Taarabhora Akasher Neechey, explodes with the strength of such a 'formless hunch' - the conflict between creativity and insanity, the blurred margins between normative reality and alternative reality. This play builds on some vignettes from the life of Vincent van Gogh - portrayed by Anjan Dutta - interspersed with fragments from familiar lives around us.

Ritwik (portrayed by Riddhi Sen), a bright, young man, strongly relates with Vincent's visions of humming birds, grasshoppers, cyprus trees, crows and the starry night. Gradually, these visions, like a disease or a desire, crawl into the mind of his psychiatrist, Dr Ruksar (portrayed by Reshmi Sen). Koushik Sen's mastery as a director is significantly reflected in the way he has crafted this performance narrative, such that each scene of the play unfolds like a canvas that is suspended in a moment of illumination. Each of these fragments, carefully installed across different zones, forms a part of the cyclical whole that the theme of the novel explores.

The space has been designed in a way that Ritwik's, Dr Ruksar's and Vincent's zones often overlap to theatrically represent the intertwining of their psychological spaces of imagination, hallucination and fear. Anjan Dutta portrays Vincent's dilemma as an artist with an intense truth that immerses the canvas of the play into a culture of fear and restlessness, as one's passion and imagination are trimmed by norms of sanity. Koushik Sen's brilliance as the volatile narrator evokes compassion through the use of a distinct lyrical mode and performance space. However, the character of Ritwik's wife, Sharmila - played by Surangana Bannerjee - remains one-dimensional in purpose and texture in the complex tapestry of voices. At the end of the play, I stepped out of the exit door into a world of visions - paintings on the body of an artist, a starry night engulfing consciousness. Is it real or unreal? A formless hunch forms...