The storyteller tells the story, but how the listener grasps it is up to him. What you take away from Renegade Amateur Theatre Society’s (RATS) production of the Tony award-winning play will be your own, but it does provide a rich landscape of motifs. Child abuse, child rights, family, the fundamental freedom of expression and freedom of the press, it’s all in there, thrown together in a bunch of short stories which, when seen with the right perspective, will tell a marvellous tale called ‘life’. And that’s what Siddharth Selvaraj, the director of the play, says too. “If two people who have watched the play can have a meaningful conversation about what they’ve just witnessed, we have more than achieved what we were looking for”.

The six-year-old theatre group found The Pillowman was the play that moved them most, after having read many scripts and putting the final few to vote. Starring Shyju Varkey as Katurian, Naomi Menon as Ariel, Mario Jerome as Tupolski and Vivek Warriar as Michal, this play is meant to shake the very foundations upon which we all base our lives and the system we take so much for granted. All proceeds will go to Stree Jagriti Samiti, to set up a medical fund for domestic workers.

The play begins with ‘Once upon a time in a totalitarian state’, when Katurian K. Katurian, a writer, whose immense talent is only matched by his fiery idealism, is being brought in for interrogation. But why? Because a series of executions are being carried out exactly according to his stories. The writer is being questioned by Ariel and Tupolski in an interrogation room and is completely bewildered over having been brought there. He even suspects that he is being accused of carrying messages against the totalitarian regime in his stories (a suspicion that arose from an inkling of fact, one can be certain).

There, in the midst of this Orwellian trail mix, lie two armies of principles waiting to collide in what production head Sudhir Selvaraj describes as the “ideological supermatch”. “The play is absolutely hilarious and you find yourself laughing right through. But all the while, you’re asking questions about what exactly is so funny”. That question is answered right away. It’s funny because it’s true. The play tries to find a “place for art, a place for free speech in society”, says Siddharth.

“It deals with child abuse, child rights and family”. The interrogation holds the play together as the stereotypical liberal writer, who believes that nothing is so horrifying or obtuse that he cannot talk about it, pits his philosophies against the typical stereotypical cop, the wheels within the totalitarian state, the instruments of fear and subjugation. Does the freedom of speech and media actually work? How much do we really want to know? These are all questions that form the currents that guide the story along, as the writings of Katurian K. Katurian are brought to life by the actors. They start off discussing the morbid stories involving children, moving on to other unpleasant subjects from Katurian’s work, all of which the writer adamantly brushes off with, “It is the duty of a storyteller to tell a story”.

As the plot unravels, so does the more human side of the three characters in the interrogation room. Perhaps, they begin to discover that once they drop their farcical beliefs, that they are all human and startlingly alike at that. The story of Katurian’s own life begins to tell itself too, a darkly brooding, Kafka-like tale it turns out to be, too. To give much more away would be doing a great disservice, for the storytellers await you on stage.