A thin line between imagination & reality

Nritya Forum as a part if Nritya’s Hyderabad Theatre Weekend staged a play titled ‘Skepticism’ on February 24, at Banjara Hills. The play is psychological and philosophical, and it touches the elements of absurdism, surrealism and scepticism. The play is written and directed by Amaan Ahmad.

The story revolves around a psychologically disturbed artist who is going through an existential crisis and wants to commit suicide. Several emotions surround him, and each emotion tries to prove its power over the human mind. Meanwhile, ‘Reality’ and ‘Imagination’ are also around the artist. As the play progresses, the protagonist gets confused trying to choose between ‘Reality’ and ‘Imagination’ while ‘Chaos’ and ‘Insanity’ overpower all the other emotions and ‘Insanity’ instigates the artist to die.

The artist is in pain and is confused as the emotions have a philosophical debate. ‘Reality’ points out logical reasoning, while ‘Insanity’, along with other strong emotions, argue about the actual meaning of life and its futility.

Toward the end, ‘Death’ emerges and kills all the emotions, with ‘Hope’ being the last. ‘Death’ sits on his throne after killing the artist, but ‘Imagination’ and ‘Reality’ are still there as ‘Death’ cannot touch either of them. The play concludes with the artist lying down on the ground while ‘Reality’ and ‘Imagination’ walk off hand-in-hand, smirking at one another. To conclude, we don’t know whether the artist is alive or dead or whether that was the artist’s imagination or reality.