After a successful run at Serendipity Arts Festival 2024 and performance at the META Festival 2024, Avalanche opens in Mumbai at the G5A warehouse.

Avalanche, written by the Turkish playwright Tuncer Cücenoğlu, is a three-act play set in a mountain-village which spends nine months under the threat of an avalanche. During this period, people live in near-silence to ward off the threat that permeates every aspect of their existence. Such is their fear of the untoward that even births during this period are prohibited, and all procreation therefore is carefully regulated. Any deviation is met with severe punishment, such as the live burial of pregnant women who it is feared will go into labour during the period of danger.

The play’s events, which span the course of a few hours, focus on three generations of a family that live together in a single house. At the opposite ends of a spectrum of characters, generically named as Man, Woman, Old Woman, and so on, we have an Old Man who has lived a life of silence and now laments the loss of his years, and a Young Man and Young Woman who struggle to conform to this silence. Avalanche depicts the crisis of silencing a populace under the guise of the greater good, which ultimately results in disintegrating the very community that it seeks to protect.

Avalanche has been nominated in 6 categories including Best Production, Best Director, Best Stage Design, Best Actor Male, Best Supporting Actor Female and Best Supporting Actor Male at the 19th Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards.

Cast:

Young Man: Shardul Bhardwaj

Young Woman: Shweta Pasricha

Man: Ashwath Bhatt

Woman: Anamika Tiwari

Old Man: Rajeev Gaursingh

Old Woman: Swaroopa Ghosh

Midwife: Indu Sharma

President: Vikram Kochhar

Female Representative: Monica Mahendru

Male Representative: Lakshya Goel

Guard 1: Saarthak Dewan

Guard 2: Mohit Tiwari

Crew:

Director: Gandharv Dewan

Playwright: Tuncer Cücenoğlu

Creative Advisors: Keval Arora & Shalini Baxi

Space Design: Madhav Raman (Anagram Architects)

Scenographer and Lights Design: Ujjwal Kumar

Head of Design: Ashok Kumar

Costume Designers: Bhumika Dube & Shweta Pasricha (Green Room Trunks)

Sound Designer: Hitesh Chaurasia

Translation: Gandharv Dewan, Shardul Bhardwaj & Rajesh Nirmal

Voice Culture: Shalini Baxi

Make-up: Anamika, Shweta, Monica and Shalini Baxi

Producers: Gandharv Dewan and Shardul Bhardwaj (The Gathered)

Supported by: Lata Bhasin, DesignStack & Tanya Loond

Executive Producer: Saarthak Dewan

Associate Producer and Assistant Director: Mohit Tiwari

Legal Advisor: Debanjana Mukherjee

Still Photography: Shahid Hussain

Documentation: Juhi Sharma, Mohit Tiwari & Shardul Bhardwaj

Poster Art: Divya Singh

Sound Mixing: Shashank Kothari

Costume Assistant: Madhura Gokarna

Production Assistant: Lokesh Dhakad and Harshul Kaul

Commissioned by Serendipity Arts Foundation for Serendipity Arts Festival, 2023

Read the reviews in:

MINT: https://lifestyle.livemint.com/how-to-lounge/art-culture/avalanche-the-slow-brew-of-a-play-performed-in-whispers-111710124929483.html

Indian Express: https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/life-style/serendipity-arts-festival-goa-avalanche-nsd-9086825/