Rethinking the idea of home at a park

Home is an idea. It can be everywhere or nowhere,” says Nimi Ravindran, whose directorial Park is back on stage at Ranga Shankara this Sunday. Written by Manav Kaul, this award-winning comedy navigates through the issues of urban migration and isolation in big cities. A Sandbox Collective presentation, the play features actors Ashish D’Abreo, Deepak Subramanya and Jimmy Xavier.It’s interesting to point out that although the play was written way back in 2007, it has made successful rounds of several theatre circuits in the country over the past decade, and it is currently being performed in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.
The narrative questions and explores the aspects that comprise home for the country’s floating population, but in a light-hearted manner. “Although the park bench has been used as a metaphor to draw the audiences’ attention to a deeper meaning, it does play a pivotal role on stage. The music and parallel track, which includes a Japanese composition, cleverly intersperses with the theme of the script and underpins the basic idea,” Nimi explains. The play revolves around three men, who are fighting over their individual space at a park. What started off as a friendly banter quickly turns violent, as tension arises over concerns of space, territory and ownership. Everyone wants to sit where someone else is already seated, and no one seems to want to give up their seat.
“Themes like migration, isolation, a sense of displacement and ignorance run through the play at various points. It’s about people who migrate from one city to another, in a course of time, start belonging in that place. While for many the sense of being uprooted remain, others take it as an adventure in life. Park makes you rethink the idea of home — is it a certain space where you live and spend your days and nights in, or is it an emotion that makes you feel comfortable and be yourself,” says Nimi, according to whom the ability to laugh at yourselves is necessary. And thus, the play tries to talk about a sensitive issue in a comic manner.