HYDERABAD: Passengers, staged at Rangbhoomi Theatre, by Sairbeen Theatre Collective in collaboration with Unmasked productions, is a psychological thriller. The play starts off with a van driver, played by Asghar Khan - who is also the writer of the play, singing a song with a guitar in hand which indicates the journey ahead, while his wife, also the conductor, interrupts to tell him to get the van ready for the journey. One by one, the ‘passengers’ enter the van.
The characters range from an activist, a pregnant woman with her husband, a young man who finally found work, on a journey together after missing their bus from hours before. Here’s when the special character enters, the only truth as they call it, death. A man dressed in black, who transcends the bus into a portal where it’s in the confine of time and space.
Death proceeds to tell the people on the van, ‘one of you will die here tonight, one and only one soul will be sacrificed’, but with its own twist, the person has to sacrifice himself. Everyone drags each other, forcing them to give in. Death watches the whole thing play out.
Stating how selfish humans are and how all of them want to live and don’t want to accept their fate. Each character comes forward to talk about their own reasons and stories of why they can’t be the ones being sacrificed. Death says, “We all live in the shadow of time, everyone dies but no one wants to admit how futile their life is.” The passengers get goosebumps as they see death is nearing and it could be any one of them. They come to the conclusion that they’ll vote for the one and the person has to agree regardless of anything.
Passengers is different from other plays, the ones audiences usually get only to watch, being an interactive play, the audience gets to participate in the final decision of who has to go, the writer leaves it to the audience with their own justification. Then the organisers of the play or as death calls them, ‘the devil’s agents’, collects the answers from the audience which decided the fate of the play. There on, the play proceeds and the devil appears on the stage, and with utter silence, holds the driver’s hand and the curtains close.
Speaking to CE, one of the organisers and the co-owner of Rangbhoomi, Kajol says, “The play is very different from a lot that I’ve seen. The excellent production and execution of the play sets it apart and being interactive, I think the audience really enjoyed being part of the play in a certain way. There are different age groups here today, from 18 to 50 plus and that makes it furthermore exciting to see how a variety of people understand and receive the concept of the play,” she says.
The audience response was positive throughout. The viewers did not refrain from expressing their excitement. “It is an amazing perception, how people hide behind democracy and religion, failing to realise how important life is in itself. The concept was quite different from what we have seen before and it being an interactive play was the best part. The suspense kept us on edge at all times,” said a member of the audience.