Chaepani stages a cultural adaptation of Sarah Ruhl's Melancholy Play

Chaepani, a Kolkata-based performance collective, will be staging a new production, called Melancholy Play, this Sunday. Directed by Rosalie Purvis, Melancholy play is a cultural adaptation of Sarah Ruhl’s play of the same name and the last leg of Tell Tales 2019 — A Cross-Cultural Theatre Festival.

The play revolves around the central character Tilly, (played by Debaroti Chakraborty) whose melancholy becomes an attractive thing for people and they fall head-over-heels in love with her. But one day, when melancholy leaves her side and she genuinely starts feeling happy, things turn topsy-turvy.

“Sometimes when you see that your beloved community is working so hard to help others, to fight for social justice, to help and to heal; you begin to wish that you could give them some moments of joy, moments to celebrate humanness and the wonderful and ephemeral emotions that run between us," says Rosalie Purvis, a scholar from Cornell University who is visiting Kolkata.

"That is how I feel towards my Chaepani family here. We decided together to explore this text as a way to propose a defense of melancholy, silliness, poetry, fallibility, beauty and different kinds of love,”

Sounak Kundu plays Frank, Anindya Sen Gupta plays Lorenzo, Seamonti Chaudhuri plays Frances, Avirupa Bhaduri plays Joan and Chayan Chakraborty plays Julian. The musical score has been directed by Chayan Chakraborty

Melancholy Play will be staged at Padatik on April 7, in two shows- at 11 am and 3 pm