Mondays Are Best For Flying Out of Windows is Perch’s new production, based on the work of Daniil Kharms — a dramatist, poet and writer of the Soviet Era.
The plot is as absurd as it gets: “A girl finds a job as a cashier in your store, turns the handle on the cash-till and dies. What do you do? Stick a mushroom in her hand and pretend she’s alive. People throw themselves off windows, leap out of cupboards, spend maddeningly long hours in queues, attack each other with snot and cucumbers, fall, sleep, fight and die.”
There is method in the madness, though, and that is what makes Kharms decidedly unique as compared to his Tolstoy and Pushkin. Rajiv Krishnan, director of Mondays Are Best For Flying Out of Windows, says Kharms evolved a particular genre: “His work does not subscribe to the logic of stories, with a clear beginning, middle and end. He created what is known as an ‘anti-story’ that alternates between non-linear and dream-like, fantasy occurrences.”
Kharms was often incarcerated by the Stalinist regime for his unconventional and rebellious ways. He was restricted to writing only for children and his adult literature wasn’t published during his lifetime.
Rajiv says Kharms plays are multi-layered. “On the surface, it is comical, but they can also be dark and sinister. Kharms himself said he likes nonsense. Also, there is a veiled mockery of Tolstoy and Pushkin.” Though he insists that one needn’t force an interpretation from his work. “There are many interpretations. We try not to sneak in an interpretation,” he adds.
Rajiv got to know about Kharms, last year, when he was at Adishakti Theatre in Pondicherry. “I met Jonathan Walton, a musician and sound engineer, who was living in Auroville at that time.
He casually mentioned Kharms as a writer who had influenced him immensely.” Later, when Rajiv was mulling over his next production, he thought of Kharms. “That was the beginning. After The Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa commissioned us to work on a play, we decided to look at Kharms in earnest. We rehearsed this play entirely in Pondicherry, for about seven weeks between mid September and end November 2018, and it premièred in Panjim, Goa in December 2018.”
The next challenge was to translate his stories onto the stage. “We decided to work with puppets. Two cast members — Vijay Ravikumar and Rency Philip — have worked with puppets before. We created puppets from paper and tape and started improvising with puppets. Kharms had, in fact, written about puppets,” says Rajiv. Then there is the music that adds to the play. “Music is composed by Abhaydev Praful.”
Rajiv stresses the play is constantly evolving. “It can be performed anywhere, including auditoriums, and homes, so if anyone is interested in staging it in their home for a small circle of friends, do get in touch with us.”
As for how they arrived at the title, Rajiv says: “We always want to choose a title that will grab the attention. There are these sudden, unprovoked scenes of violence. We realised there is a lot of flying and falling, which is how we arrived at the title.”
The play will be staged on May 24 (8 pm) and May 25 and 26 (3 pm and 6.30 pm) at Jagriti Theatre. Tickets are available at the venue and bookmyshow.com.
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