Mind gazing through petal talk

A psychological thriller, Tell Me The Name of a Flower depicts various shades of a beautiful yet dangerous nature of the mind. Originally written by Gujarati playwright Madhu Rye, and performed once in the early 60s, the play depicts the layers that need to be unravelled, in order to get to know a person. Murtuza Khetty, the director, delves deeper.

Co-director of three other plays, Tell Me The Name of a Flower will be Murtuza’s first play as a solo director. He says, “It revolves around a theatre group which puts up performances and mainly revolves around the main character Kanta.

She gets rolled up in an affair, which in turn, brings news of her friend’s affairs from the past.” The story which sounds quite complicated also has a number of twists and turns.

“I feel like this storyline is very relevant even today, even though it was written in the early 60s. It has also been a long time since we have performed a thriller and something written by an Indian author,” explains the director. A classic portrayal of six petals of a multi-shaded flower, each petal depicts a different emotion like helplessness, greed, fear, love, etc.

“To understand each character, we held an exercise where the actors had to take on different characters and were hit with some truly sharp and pointed questions, which made it easier to understand the various emotions and characters better,” reveals Murtuza about how they unravelled.

Revolving around affairs, blackmail, suspense and even murder, the audience will be expected to really think about every single scene, according to Drithi Shetty, the protagonist of the play.

“As the ‘play within the play’ progresses, the characters open up like flowers,” explains the artiste, revealing the metaphor behind its name. Her character also asks some compelling questions that challenge the audience.

“In order to completely understand the play, the audience must make sure to not leave their brains at home and actually question the motives and dialogues produced by characters,” says Drithi who doubles as a Bharatnatyam dancer and has starred in a few plays and even a short film.

“And what’s most interesting is that the audience is sure to relate to each character in some way or knows somebody like the character,” she reveals in conclusion.

— The play will be staged at Alliance Francaise on October 15 and 16 at 3.30 and 7.30 pm