Meghna AT has badly lost her voice and struggles to speak. It may not be an infection. Her doctor says it’s due to pollution – which is ironic since she’s researching the environmental crisis in Pune to incorporate into her play Plan B/C/D/E. The play will be presented as part of the IAPAR Theater Festival at Sriram Lagu Rang-Akash in Pune on December 12.
Plan B/C/D/E is an interactive exhibit that emerged after Meghna grew tired of waiting for policymakers to effectively address climate change. She makes a plan to solve the crisis. This play, in which the audience plays an important role, is an attempt to submerge those plans. Is to release statistics about caution days and extreme caution days during peak summer in Mumbai. Meghna asked the audience, “So how many days are left?” “Char,” they shout, and she breaks into a popular Hindi song, “Jeena ke hai…” and they reply, “Char din”.
Humor is an important tool in drama. Irreverence is the tone of the show. I think, if I only give facts, this will be a lecture series and not a play. “I think the reason we all struggle reading the news is that everything is always heavy,” she says. Over the years, she’s had viewers consistently tell her that they didn’t expect to laugh so much on a show about the climate crisis.
Plan B/C/D/E is a semi-fictional version of Meghna, following the protagonist to solve a planetary emergency. She is a regular person who believes in viewers who have climate concerns. She talks about predictions that by 2050, most of Mumbai will be under water during the monsoon season. “Being a girl from Mumbai, this prediction scares me. I can’t imagine living anywhere else because I’m a theater artist and can’t pay the rent. I stay at my family’s house in Mumbai, which is the only way I can do this job. So, I have to save the city and I have to save this career. But, I don’t see any steps to be taken to prevent the effects of global warming on the city,’ she says.
Before each show, Meghna researches the history of the city she is performing in, its development history, and predicted weather future. She was studying about Pune when she came across an incident in September when she saw a Pune Municipal Corporation truck and two two-wheelers fall into a sinkhole that suddenly opened in the parking area of the city post office in Peth on Wednesday. It looked like there was an old well that was built into the hole and covered with a paver block. “I have used a lot of personal history in the play. I have a lot of personal stories as I live in Mumbai. Fortunately, I also have memories of Pune and am developing these relationships for the audience,” says Meghna. She researches extensively and many people email me months later for links to surveys and studies.
The show began in 2019 in an art room and has been staged in a living room, a black box, a proscenium, and several offbeat locations. “The goal of the stage is not to make it look like a play because it’s not a play. It’s reality,” she says.
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