06 August,2026 09:13 AM IST | Mumbai | Shriram Iyengar
Vinay Pathak. Pics Courtesy/Aadyam
It's where all the answers are, they say, in the past. "Sometimes, you cannot explain things in words. You have to experience it," quips Rajat Kapoor. The writer-director sympathises with our constant probing for details about the premiere of his latest play, The Thing With Feathers. "We have been at it for the last three months. It is a difficult process for me, and the actors as well, since we do not have a script to start with," he explains, with a wry smile.
Vidushi Chadha
Co-written by Kapoor and his daughter, Rabia Kapoor, and Chandrachoor Rai, the play is set across the first five decades of the 20th Century. Coming off the back of a play set in the 19th Century (Karamjale Brothers, an adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov), it snowballed from a casual discussion on history into something more tactile. "So much happened in that period between 1900-1950. The changes in flight technology, science, and society redefined our world view of the Universe, and ourselves," he asserts.
Rajat Kapoor
For the filmmaker and his writing partners, the uncertainty resonated with the present times. "We are living through something similar. There is a certain ease of living that comes with all these changes, yet at the same time, there is the other side of the coin which is uncertainty and isolation," Kapoor explains.
How does one concentrate these abstract concepts into drama without a script? You start with exploring the history through people, Kapoor explains. The plot runs across two parallel lines in India and Europe, and unravels through the intimate lives of people living these times.
Neil Bhoopalam and Radhika Mehrotra
"For instance, since I mentioned flight, we imagined what it would be like for people to fly for the first time. It is like leaping into the void, and hoping that you catch something."
This explains the title, which stems from Emily Dickinson's poem, Hope is the thing with feathers. "At its heart, the play was about hope; a state of being. It is what helps people live through the darkest times. All of it came together in that one simple line by Dickinson," he says.
Emily Dickinson. Pic Courtesy/Wikipedia
The presence of familiar faces and friends such as Neil Bhoopalam and Vinay Pathak, among a loaded ensemble helps explore such complexities. "I love the process of starting with almost nothing, and slowly arriving at something more coherent. It is a process that I, and actors, struggle with. You occasionally feel useless, inadequate and futile, but eventually find something, coherent" Kapoor chuckles. Quite like poetry.
Emily Dickinson often used the â+' sign as a variant marker to signal alternative words or phrases in a poem. This has allowed XML/TEI coded programmes to effectively archive multiple iterations of her poems in the Emily Dickinson Museum.
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