Director Mohit Takalkar on bringing Anatomy of a Suicide to the Indian stage

When a play carries a title like Anatomy of a Suicide, audiences often expect a clinical examination of death. What they will encounter instead is something far more unsettling — a discovery of what remains behind.

A story told across three lifetimes

Written by 2018 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize winner, playwright Alice Birch — Anatomy of a Suicide follows three women: Carol, Anna and Bonnie (mother, daughter and granddaughter) who occupy the same theatrical space with their stories intersecting across time in a daring narrative structure that has earned international acclaim since its 2017 premiere at London’s Royal Court Theatre.

For director, Mohit Takalkar, the play’s power however revealed itself long before rehearsals began. “The play was a structural shock before an emotional shock. I had never encountered a play where three generations coexist so fluidly and violently inside the same theatrical breath,” begins Mohit, expressing his first impressions after indulging in the story.

What began as an experiment gradually reveals itself as an exploration of deep emotions on stage. Carol struggles with severe depression, Anna battles addiction and Bonnie attempts to build a life free from the shadows that preceded her. Yet Alice’s writing resists easy explanations, questioning whether pain is inherited, learned, repeated or endured.

Though rooted in a British context, the play finds an uncanny familiarity in Indian households. “In India, we still inherit silence very efficiently within families. Particularly around mental health, addiction, caregiving, emotional exhaustion and women’s inner lives. People weren’t saying, ‘I know someone like this.’ They were saying: this silence exists in my family,” explains the director. For Mohit, the play’s greatest revelation was its focus on continuity rather than catastrophe. “The play wasn’t treating suicide as an isolated act. It was examining emotional inheritance. The way pain mutates, survives, hides and sometimes quietly repeats across generations,” avers Mohit.

Our discussions with Mohit further revealed that he intended for the production to resist the temptation of sensationalising suffering. Instead of dramatic spectacle, the attempt is to find meaning in pauses, unfinished conversations and moments of missed connection. The focus remains firmly on human complexity, refusing easy diagnoses or simple explanations.

In a cultural moment increasingly concerned with mental health and intergenerational trauma, Anatomy of a Suicide offers neither solutions nor certainty. What it provides instead is a rare opportunity to witness how the stories that families avoid discussing can continue to shape the lives that follow.

INR 500. June 6, 3.30 pm & 7.30 pm. At Ranga Shankara, JP Nagar.

(Avantika Roy is an intern at Indulge, Bengaluru.)

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