Play Review: Yugant by Gerish Khemani
I watched Yugant at Prithvi Theatre, starring the fabulous Barkha Fatnani and Ajinkya Ovhal. The play is heavy. It requires a lot of thought to process and hold. Gerish seems to have some kind of mastery of patience and thairav —of knowing when to let a moment sit. The play's visuals leave more to be desired, but that seems to be an artistic choice. It is ironically interesting that the play was performed during an El Niño in Mumbai, where the rains had been delayed. Perhaps that made some of what the play was exploring resonate a little more immediately. The beauty of the play, for me, is the famine—the stripped barrenness of the world. There is something very effective about how little there is, and what that absence allows the play to hold. The calling of home and the idea of what home is; the people that define an identity and the holding onto that identity despite the conditions. The beauty of the play is also in how it questions science and the human ego that creates barrenne...
