4.48 Montrash, a traumatic journey through the life of a depressed person 

Thrissur 4.48 Montrash: A highly socio-political play exploring depression and societal trauma through dense poetry, videos, and unconventional storytelling.

4.48 Montrash, a play staged at the International Theatre Festival of Kerala (ITFoK), took the audience on a dark journey through the life of a depressed person.

The play is the Bangla adaptation of 4.48 Psychosis by British playwright Sarah Kane. It is the last enigmatic, yet distressing play written by Kane. The 28-year-old Kane took her life a few days after writing the play, after years of suffering from clinical depression.

4.48 Psychosis can be seen as a discussion about the author’s own suffering under depression and contemplation of suicide. A sequence of thoughts, fractured and emotionally lacerating, the play reflects a mind on the verge of breakdown. First staged a year after the playwright’s death, 4.48 Psychosis was called Kane’s suicide note.

“Though it is an adaptation of 4.48 Psychosis, it’s not a suicide note. We tried to make it contemporary and relevant in the context of Bangladesh. It is very close to the translation. But our theatrical language was definitely something from Bangladesh,” said director of the play Syed Jamil Ahmed.

A highly socio-political play, 4.48 Montrash challenges conventions and sparks controversy in society. The play tells the story of a person struggling from indefinable losses and excruciating inner conflicts. All these are presented in a melange of dense poetry, daily-life colloquialism, first person narratives, and videos.

“Narrating stories of melancholy and anxiety on stage is a challenge. Engaging the audience and communicating with them is hard. We used videos and projections, which speak about the social context. Not on verbal language, but on the visual language, we tried to anchor it into the social context of Bangladesh. We changed our visuals a little bit to make it relevant to India too,” said Dr. Ahmed.