You could call it a cynic’s perspective or a realists interpretation. Whatever it is, thespian R.S. Raghu finds no humour in skullduggery, sabotage or treachery. Though he hasn’t been immune to these things but he has found a way around them. The performance stage has become a sounding board of sorts, that gives a chance of free expression to this actor-director. In his new play M.S.D. (Men, Sex and Dhokha), he looks at the puzzling relationship dynamics between human being that entrenches everybody in a spiral of perplexity.
Raghu, who has directed the play, holds a significant part in it too. He is one of the five characters who gets coiled in love, hatred, betrayal and sex in a way that it impacts each all of them awfully. “The story is inspired from real life. How today it is so difficult to trust people, and truly gauge who they are. They’re never what they seem,” he says.
While scripting the play, he used exaggeration to dramatise the subtext of mistrust. Acts in the play are arranged in a way that each reveals a new shock. “I am surprised at how modern-day love has almost become synonymous with infidelity, where friends become foe and foes become friends at the drop of a hat. How unpredictable things have become,” he says.
He blames it partly on the access to scientific knowledge that gives technology a lot of liberties. Technology has caused social isolation from which emanates loneliness which in turn gives rise to a desperate need for instant gratification.
“And people will do all sorts of things to bring back the excitement, including being dishonest,” says Raghu, who has used M.S.D as a social comment to belabour the realities of modern human relationships.
M.S.D, December 29-30, 6 pm, Akshara Theatre, Baba Kharak Singh Marg