Rama is in a fix, Lakshman is at his wit’s end, and if you head to Neeraj Singh’s Ravan Leela tomorrow, you’ll find yourself equally perplexed. In this play-within-a-play that tells the story of a Ram Leela production unfolding in a fictional village, the ten-headed antagonist takes hostage not just Sita, but the entire production. His demand is a corporate manager’s worst nightmare — he wants a 400 per cent raise, and he wants it now.

Written by Sangeet Natak Akademi Award winner playwright Dr Kusum Kumar in 1980, the play follows an amateur theatre group’s attempt to stage Ram Leela in Jigarpur. “Things go south when the actor playing Ravan has a mid-performance epiphany, and refuses to die at the hands of Rama unless he is given fair compensation for the day’s work,” Singh explains. What ensues is chaos of epic proportions, quite literally.