Welcome to a mountain village where you can only speak in whispers

After the last show of their play at the recent Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa, the team of Avalanche went out to celebrate in a restaurant festooned with Christmas decorations. As the DJ blasted foot tapping numbers to a dancing crowd, a group of diners from another table came over to the Avalanche corner and one of them said, “Even before the first word was said, we knew what the play would be about. You were very powerful.”

Avalanche, the first directorial project by National School of Drama alumni Gandharv Dewan, gives audiences an experience of living in an oppressive condition, under a constant threat of an avalanche. It is performed at 16 degree C — audiences are given blankets — and the atmospheric soundscape replicates the rumble of the mountains. The play will travel to other cities in India.

Silent Metaphor

Based on a work by Tuncer Cücenoğlu, Avalanche transports people to a mountain village, which spends nine months speaking in whispers and doing nothing to disturb the delicate balance of nature. Even childbirths are carefully timed and breaking the rules can result in severe punishments, including the live burial of expectant mothers. Only in the remaining three months can people celebrate and “be normal”.

The protagonists belong to a family, called Man (Ashwath Bhatt), Woman (Anamika Tiwari), Old Man (Rajeev Gaursingh) and Old Woman (Swaroopa Ghosh), among others. Young Man (Shardul Bhardwaj) and Young Woman (Shweta Pasricha) start to break the rules. Though the play is inspired by East Anatolia, it mentions no country and the playwright, who was from Turkiye, had written it in the context of the Erdogan regime. “The play has a central metaphor, but there is the universality that the playwright has tried to achieve, which I’m attracted to, and this is through the interpersonal relationships. From Turkey to India, the internal family dynamics are the same. What also attracted me to the play first was the performative grammar. How do you do a play which is in whispers only? How do you create a space which is like a threatened mountain village,” says Dewan.

Powerful Performers

Avalanche has brought some of the powerful artistes of the stage, including Keval Arora as one of the creative advisors. “In the beginning, it looks like a domestic play but, slowly, it unravels and you realise it is very deep. Avalanche is talking about how voices are being suppressed. When this happens in a democracy, it results in the absence of dialogue. For me, the play worked on different levels,” says Bhatt.

With his previous works, including Abhishek Majumdar’s political play Eidgah Ke Jinnat, based on Kashmir, Bhatt chooses scripts that resonate with his ideas. Has he felt the need to stay silent? “Sometimes we do feel if there is any point in speaking up? Will there be a difference? But, sometimes, you really feel suffocated and speak up though it might not matter,” he adds.

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