19:30, Tue 25th February – Sat 1st March 2025 at Pembroke New Cellars
Lent Week 5
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Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Questions
"Writer: ...Tell me- how can you write a play about someone who sees life realistically and dreams about it romantically?
Manasi: I can't think of a better protagonist for a play.
Writer: No. It's not possible. The more I tie him up in a plot, the more he escapes; says it isn't real. The more lines I write for him, the more he stands outside them. Says they are not real. Oh! He know's too much- altogether too much!"
What does it mean to live a meaningful life? Evam Indrajit, by Badal Sircar, dives into this universal question with humour, heartbreak, and a touch of surrealism. At its core, a writer struggles with writer’s block, for he knows not the struggles of the poor or the luxuries and love interests of the rich. He is only surrounded by normal, boring people, unworthy of ever being a story. That is when he turns to four people in the audience—Amal, Vimal, Kamal, and Indrajit—for inspiration, he finds that their lives are strikingly normal, following predictable paths of work, family, and routine. But within this ordinariness lies an extraordinary tension: Indrajit’s profound, almost painful awareness of life’s emptiness and his resistance to simply conforming.
Do you want to question your role in the scripts of your lives and engage in a conversation about identity, purpose, and the fragile beauty of being human? The play blurs the line between fiction and reality, weaving poetic dialogue and absurdist humour into a sharp critique of societal constructs. Ideas that will linger long after the final bow and you may want to drop out of your degree to live a monastic life.