Saturday, April 11, 2009

The Skeleton Woman

"If I could start my life again, I would begin by changing my profession. I would rather live on a full stomach and an empty mind. Perhaps as a fisherman...."

This was the tag line of the new play that hit the theatres a few weeks back. I am a great fan of Anuraag Kashyap, and that he had produced this play, I thought I should give it a try. And of course, it had his girl friend Kalki (The "Chanda" from Dev-D) acting in it...

Being light on my pocket (Rs. 80/-), I was happy to go for this show without keeping any expectation... The story is an adaptation of an Inuit folktale of the fishermen from the north, and tells about a fisherman turned writer, who is trapped in his own imaginary world and his marriage crumbling all around him.

The play begins, with the writer sitting in a boat which consists of a wooden frame, lost in his own imaginary world, and jolted back to reality by his wife, who is tidying up the place after they have just shifted into the new apartment. Right from the beginning, the rift between the wife and the husband is quite evident, as she is really frustrated with him cause he is unable to complete a single story while she has to work and manage the house by her own...
Later she tries to become a part of his imaginary world.... the fishing trips....the talking goose who gets flushed down the toilet, swims all alone on the sea, and gets trapped in a dark cave in the night.... the paper swans... the beautiful sunset from the boat and the birds flying against the setting sun, who then suddenly turn into flying piranhas and attacking the duo... the shark who swims upto them and grabs her feet...and then the skeletal hand of a woman he found on the sea.... one hilarious scene after another and I am surely having a great time...

She tries to get him back to reality, wants him to complete his novel and tries to make their marriage work... In the end, there is a real twist in the tale which lets you leave the theatre with many questions in your head, questions for which each one of us may have a different answer based on our own interpretation of his imaginations...

Kalki Koechlin has written the play along with her co-actor Prashant Prakash, for which they have won the Metroplus playwright award 2009. Kalki surely has a better presence on stage rather than the big screen, which was quite evident in the way she has acted effortlessly.... and the emotional transitions that she has shown from being lost in his imaginary world, to being an exhasperated wife in the real world were really wonderful... The on stage chemistry between the two is too good and makes you feel that the acting was simply spontaneous...

I got to see Anuraag Kashyap at the theatre... too bad I didnt get a chance to get his autograph :(
But this is a play you should definitely not miss out if you are a theatre fan.

Performances and Playwright: Kalki Koechlin, Prashant Prakash
Director: Nayantara Kotian
Producer: Anuraag Kashyap

2 comments:

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crypticrow said...

yea i wholeheartedly agree with whatever you've penned about the play...the concept, language, acting, music, set design was all so fluid that one could relate it at different levels..n kalki bein' my fav. already, i cudnt take my eyes off her..but would like to give equal credit to prashant as well for portraying what he did so effortlessly..loved something ths fresh n witty on stage after soo long :o) and also the vague ending adds to the charm of it all!
n ullu ke patthe maine agar tujhe dikhaya nahi hota toh u wouldn't have recognised anuraag kashyap!! lol..next time i'll get his autograph also n pass it on to u for sure!! :P
cheers to some happy memories of the play (esp. the freaky guy next to me who got up in the middle of it thinking its break-time!! lol)