From the Bengaluru-based Indian Ensemble, comes Algorithms, a play written and directed by Chanakya Vyas, which brings under its purview the lives of working-class Uber (or Ola) drivers — a particular demographic that arrives at cities in droves drawn by cheery incentives to a burgeoning app-based economy, only to find themselves enslaved by an insidious system. Vyas’ research has involved extensive conversations with drivers and consumers alike, and verbatim traces of those encounters survive in the narrative framework he has finally arrived at. “Although caught in the swirl of a coded-in oppressive system that allows them no respite, the drivers still remarkably retain agency,” says the director, of the piece’s world view that seeks not to make totems of the exploited, but to empathetically deconstruct their worlds. The play picks up both the quotidian and the disarming elements, of these disparate lives to fashion stories of our times.
Team work
Vyas has assembled an interesting set of people to collaborate with. While mentor Abhishek Majumdar is always at hand as an omniscient sounding board, the dramaturg on board the project was actor and director Mayura Baweja, who brought in new perspectives, tempering Vyas’ self-avowed male gaze with her own outlook, gendered or otherwise. The world of Uber drivers is an unremittingly male microcosm in which women inhabit the fringes, but Algorithms seeks to amplify some of those voices as well. “Theatre makers cannot anymore shy away from the politics of representation,” explains Vyas. Artistic impulse comes with its own subconscious leanings, and it is important to offset this with the right optics, striking a balance between creative imperatives and the political posturing that often comes off as mere tokenism.
The play’s technical team is certainly top-notch. C Sharp C Blunt’s intrepid sound engineer Nikhil Nagaraj provides soundscapes peppered with city sounds, both virtual and real. Nagaraj’s eagerly-awaited next is the 1984-inspired but futuristic Whirlpool from director John Britton. Regarding the play’s visual grammar, Vyas opted for a stylistic production design by Sridhar Murthy. “This is abstract and minimalist, yet metaphorical. For instance, the mobile devices are bright and out-sized, almost in keeping with the pervasive influence they exert on us,” elaborates Vyas. Then, there is the cutting-edge dynamic projection mapping, very new to Indian theatre, customised by whizkid Sudharshan K, whose work on Rajiv Krishnan’s Monkey and the Mobile, Vyas has long admired.
Urban ethos
There are other works that might be considered companion pieces to a play like Algorithms, and the particular urban ethos it evokes. Where the tectonic pressures between layers of society result in inadvertent cross-connections and overlaps that teach us much more about the human condition than being safely ensconced in our pockets of safety. For instance, Neel Chaudhuri’s compelling Quicksand deals with parallel cultures hauled unto an even turf by a physical altercation gone viral on social media (perhaps the most level of playing fields). Its final moments take place just after a Uber ride — a precarious meeting ground if ever between a driver driven out of his white-collar existence by an allegation, and his accuser, a woman who, unbeknownst to herself, is now his passenger.
Then there is the particular whimsy of Dharmakirti Sumant’s new play, A Doubtful Gaze at Uber at Midnight, which opened at the Serendipity Arts Festival, in which a self-avowed anti-national (played by Siddharth Menon) ostensibly gives directions to his Uber driver to his location, except that his shifting coordinates appear to map out a history of contempory India’s veritable heart of darkness — from the back-alleys in which Gauri Lankesh or Govind Pansare were assassinated to the highest point of the Statue of Unity, where perched like a bird, Menon might well be a dead ringer for Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. Unmindful of the implications of this journey, the Uber driver never once hangs up.
Algorithms will stage at Prithvi Theatre, Juhu from today onwards; more details at bookmyshow.com