When no child comes home: The play I Hate This lays bare the devastation of parental grief

What does it look like to lose a child? A trembling hand brushing against a crib that was never used. A hospital corridor that stretches far too long. A silence between two people that once held the promise of new life. Or, as in I Hate This by David Hansen, it might look like a father, alone on stage, caught in the fragments of memory, time, and unbearable grief.

All you need to know about I Hate This

Directed by Denver Anthony Nicholas and produced by Poochu’s Productions, the staging marks a significant shift in the kind of emotional terrain our theatre dares to tread.

The play, originally written and performed as a one-man show by Hansen in the early 2000s after the death of his son, is steeped in brutal honesty and vulnerability. For Denver, the decision to bring it to Chennai was both personal and instinctive.

“As a parent myself, just the thought of any harm coming to your child is the scariest feeling imaginable,” he says. “To come across a piece where a father dives deep into his grief and loss, and comes out of it with the courage to put those feelings into words, that drew me in. I believe one of the reasons this script exists is to reach out to other parents and say, ‘You’re not alone.’”

The original script is rooted in truth, and that truth is what Denver has kept untouched. “We didn’t make any changes to the context. The original story is the truth,” he adds simply.

While Hansen’s version was a solo performance, Denver made a deliberate choice to bring in another actor, Abinaya, to inhabit the multiple voices and characters that orbit the protagonist. “I didn’t want the protagonist to shift into other characters. I wanted him to feel nothing but what the father is going through. So I cast another actor to take on the other, minute yet powerful roles. Honestly, it’s a huge task for her. But the playwright was very welcoming of the choice.”

Actor TM Karthik, who plays the grieving father, approaches the role with empathy rather than performance. “Vulnerability or loss is a universal emotion,” he says. “When one loses someone precious, the feeling of being empty and rudderless is so strongly human, it breaks all divisions.”

Karthik reflects on the emotional beat that challenged him the most: “There’s a scene where the character speaks to his six-year-old niece about the loss. I, as Karthik, would never be able to do that in real life. I’d try my best to hide that kind of emotion. So I had to dig deep, into tone, restraint, truth, to play it convincingly. I’m lucky to have a co-actor who gives me the right energy and a director who knows how to bring out that vulnerability.”

Abinaya, who slips into a range of characters who come in contact with the father’s grief, doctors, family, strangers, approaches the role with a meditative awareness. “Grief, to me, is love in another form, unspoken, unrequited, unexpressed. It’s the weight of what remains when someone is gone, a love that no longer has a destination,” she says.

Though she has not experienced a loss of this kind personally, she let herself imagine it. “The fear of it has always haunted me. My approach was to sit with the terrifying ‘what if’, and let that guide my understanding,” she explains. “Acting, in this case, becomes an exercise in vulnerability, not just portraying grief, but allowing myself to be haunted by it, however briefly.”

The production takes a stripped-down, minimalistic approach with a subtle but powerful visual layer. “I’m experimenting slightly,” Denver says. “The protagonist will appear in colour, while all other characters, the memories, will be in monochrome. A visual cue that these are fragments, not people of the present.”

Perhaps the play’s emotional core is best summed up by Denver’s quiet reflection: “I think the world needs a space where vulnerability is seen as an asset, not a liability. If even one person walks away from this play and allows themselves to have a conversation about grief, that’s a win.”

INR 350 onwards. On July 19th at 4 pm. At Alliance Française de Madras, Nungambakam.

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