Perch, Chennai presents Mondays are best for flying out of windows

Details

Ticket Price:	₹ 300
Genre:	Comedy
Duration:	85 minutes
Age:	13 years and above
Director:	Rajiv Krishnan
Cast:	Created and performed by Iswar Lalitha, Rency Philip, Sachin Gurjale, Vijay Ravikumar and Vinod Ravindran Music composed and played by Abhaydev Praful Translation: Jonathan Walton Photography: Richa Bhavanam Costumes: Kaveri Lalchand Puppets and props created by the Cast Set and Light Design: Kalpana Balaji and John V. Mathew Production Management: Anushka Meenakshi

Mondays are Best for Flying out of Windows is inspired by the stories of Daniil Kharms (1905-1942), an early Soviet era absurdist poet, writer and dramatist. Kharms was often incarcerated by the Stalinist regime for his unconventional and rebellious ways. His adult literature was not published during his lifetime and he was confined to writing for children. He is said to have starved to an anonymous death in the psychiatric ward of a Soviet hospital after his arrest in 1942.  

A girl finds a job as a cashier in your store, turns the handle on the cash-till and dies. What do you do? Stick a mushroom in her hand and pretend she’s alive. People throw themselves off windows, they leap out of cupboards, they spend maddeningly long hours in queues, they attack each other with snot and cucumbers, they fall, they sleep, they fight, they die. This is the world of Daniil Kharms: chaotic, absurd, sometimes frightening, often incomplete.

Kharms is a contrasting figure in the lineage of great Russian writers. While works of authors like Tolstoy, Pushkin and Dostoevsky are classics; most of Kharms’ stories can fit in half a sheet of paper, ending before they have even begun. You could say that he has created a genre – the anti-story – stories that seem to reject all accepted notions of narrative as a way of getting to the truth.  

And you find that the only rational response is to laugh. The worse it gets, the more you laugh. Kharms is the master of dark laughter. It’s so ridiculous, so absurd, it can’t be true right? Right?

Mondays are Best for Flying out of Windows was specially commissioned for the Serendipity Arts Festival and premiered in Panjim, Goa in December 2018.