What is love? And what is information? Did you eat? Have you reached? Are these phrases that convey love or information?” questions Mohit Takalkar when talking about directing the upcoming NCPA production of Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information, in association with Aasakta Kalamanch, Pune.

Written as a series of over 50 disparate scenes divided into seven sections, the play is an exercise in reimagining the medium. It is no wonder then that it appeals to Takalkar whose last two works, the award-winning Hunkaro and Ghanta Ghanta Ghanta Ghanta Ghanta, broke barriers of form and narrative.

At first read, Love and Information is breezy, affecting and pithy. The second time around, it gets under your skin, revealing itself through conversations that have myriad possibilities. There are no stage directions, no character attributions and virtually no notes for performance.

There is a wide range of subjects covered from mental illness to privacy erosion to memory atrophy. The scenes are of varying lengths and the structure allows for the reader/viewer to narrow in on a world oversaturated with information. There is poetry, there are universal truths, there is tenderness and there is strife. It is like scrolling through Instagram or eavesdropping in a busy coffee shop.

Takalkar will remind you that the play was written in 2012 when social media was not at its peak and smart devices were not all-consuming. “Now everyone has a device. I’m not so worried about that. People are going to get bored and have shorter attention spans. We see that with cricket and everything else. That is not the enemy here. [What’s of concern is] we are being bombarded by information and we are not able to decipher it,” he explains.

A new syntax 

For Takalkar, the play was both fascinating and immediate. “Each scene can be a separate play and leaves you at a place where a play could start,” he says adding, “There’s politics, mental health, children and sex. It is our world and there is a certain urgency to it.”

After Hunkaro, Takalkar’s search was for pieces that would require audience participation. He was also looking for ones that would redefine the grammar of writing for stage. It is the culmination of this that led him to Love and Information. “I come from the Marathi tradition with some of the strongest playwrights like Vijay Tendulkar and Mahesh Elkunchwar. And there came a structure with it. Over time you could identify if a play was written in the Tendulkar tradition, for example,” he explains.

“British writing that started with Sarah Kane and Sam Steiner has been trying to break this idiom and find a new syntax, a new grammar for writing. Unless it comes from the playwrights, we won’t be able to change the syntax of the performance. It will still have the start, middle, end, the character and the plot.”

Takalkar has already left the linear behind, and with a non-linear, often fragmented, narrative, come new challenges. Decoding the playwright’s mind and the patterns behind it, according to Takalkar, are the most difficult but also the most exciting parts of the exercise.

“How to make sense of it? And how to have continuity in the story? It’s a slippery slope. When Caryl Churchill writes it at the age of 75 after she has done everything else, it is a responsibility to zero down on the point. You could make anything of it. How do you choose between the 10 different possibilities? The challenge is not to make the scene interesting but for the narrative to make sense,” he elaborates.

The love and the information 

It might be difficult to decode, but Takalkar assures us that it’s all there in Churchill’s play. She is trying to draw our attention to the fact that there is information, there is knowledge, there is universal wisdom, and then there is love. “Right now, we are confusing the three; we think information is wisdom and that knowledge is also wisdom,” he explains.

“In a world filled with information and knowledge, there are these truths. They come in short bursts. You can miss them, but when they come, they shine for a brief moment,” he adds, saying that Churchill’s love isn’t necessarily a romantic notion but encompasses axioms of trust and faith.

It is in these little bursts submerged in information and knowledge, where the performance of the writing lies. “Towards the end, in one of the scenes, someone asks, ‘Do you love me?’ And further towards the end, there is the answer, ‘I do.’ I think therein lies the play. There is love, but it is lost,” he says.

Behind the scenes 

For Takalkar, it is the text that demands its process and he claims to have left the traditional route behind nearly 15 years ago. He now believes in getting on the floor and working out the possibilities that it generates. This is quite evident in the open rehearsal room in Mumbai’s Lokhandwala. Everyone in the room has a voice, and Takalkar wouldn’t have it any other way. 

In a work-in-progress scene, actors take the reins as they play out the parts. Every time they return to it, more detail and new challenges are thrown their way. And every time, a new, sharper interpretation emerges.

It sounds unending, and while the play may keep evolving, where in a non-traditional process does one stop? “Everything is bound by design. Once the design of the play starts speaking, it gets controlled. Then we keep exploring within those confines,” he says, reminded of Ghanta Ghanta Ghanta Ghanta Ghanta, an adaptation of Steiner’s Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons, where a cloud hanging overhead became central to the design.

The point 

In Hunkaro, Takalkar’s play with Ujaagar Dramatic Association which bagged seven Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards, the first few minutes can seem difficult. You are looking for answers and virtually everyone in the theatre is wondering what to make of it. Slowly, the play unravels and rewards the audience for their patience and effort.

It has since become Takalkar’s guiding principle. “We have dumbed down the general audience. Why won’t they understand?” he asks. “We are not asking them to make sense of Greek tragedy but of life and the people around them. If people don’t want to put in work, then I can’t make anything.” He strongly rejects the idea that people are drowned in the happenings of the world and come to the theatre, or to art itself, for entertainment alone. “During the World Wars people were dying, but they would still go underground and listen to music. The best writing and films came out of that time.”

Love and Information, Takalkar believes, is more accessible than his other plays. “I will keep challenging people to think more. It doesn’t take much. There may not be immediate gratification but if you ponder a bit, it’s there,” he observes, completing the arc of a conversation about a play that speaks to an age of instant gratification.