An Imitation of death: An intimate journey through, with, and for death.

Drama Review

Vishnavi

Grave. Memory. Grief.
When the maker told 15 of us to think about death and spill out the three words that immediately came into our consciousness, these were the ones I held out.
Grave: It reminded me of flowers, dead but never dried.
Memories: Their strength and fine lines.
Grief: The ways to let go and love.

Though death is a universal truth and experience, it is personal in every turn and curve for every person. We create a different world with every other person we cross tracks with, our emotions, equations, and understanding change from person to person and so does their death.

We undoubtedly lose them, but what we truly grieve for, is the loss of space we build with them together. It is such a strong move that years of living together, sharing communities, and happy happenings find it hard to outlive the single memory of death.

My childhood has once or twice met with the death of loved ones, be it, my grandfather, whom I loved beyond sleep, my very close friend from school. But never once did I cry.
As children, we often get into this habit of imagining the death scenarios of our very loved ones and us. But again I never cried, I remember writing a poem in 7th standard titled
“I’ve saled my heart in sleep. Bring it back I’ll cry ”

I lived with Guilt, of not crying when I see someone die, as death always correlated with tears and tiredness. Emil Madhavi’s ” An imitation of death” took me to these days of guilt and sat with me until an uninvited drop knocked at my lips.

The theatre performance was arranged in a way that 15 individuals could take part in a single go.
It was never a unitary performance, 15 different people experienced 15 different narratives, emotions, and ways of perceiving and accepting the realities of death.
15 different yet similar and familiar individuals walking ahead holding hands so tight that no one falls.
In the face of death, the fear of leaving behind makes us so rational that we hardly care about whom we are holding on to until we are held.
Who we are walking with and where we are moving to. We just move.

Death, though is the ultimate happening in every breathing body, it comes different, unequal, and unique.
Some people die because death seems the only resort, and then are people who die with a lot of unchecked wishes and to-dos.
Growing up, I was very curious to know the color of death.
Some believed it to be black, some others white, Here in 2 hours of sensual treat and unconventional theatre experience, I discovered that death is painted in fear, fear that smells of rain that drains you in pain.
The world of the dead, where we were taken to was instilled with speaking mirrors all around, they shouted: ” ifs, could have been, mother, father, chances….” and all other fragment phrases which seemed meaningful only in the language of death.

I never regarded death as a hopeless end, because if that was the case nobody would ever keep the epitome of hope -the flower’s in the grave.
This performance where I along with my fellow travelers and actors moved together came to an end with this note of connection with each other, whispers, weeps, and a tackled and fearless relationship with death.

2 hours of my theatre experience with Mavericks can never be justified in words as that is meant to be felt.

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