Actors assembled under Pune's Rangdrishti group trying to get under the tiger's skin while rehearsing Bengal Tiger At the Baghdad Zoo. Pic/Mandar Tannu

When a play, set in the war zone of Baghdad, is adapted and directed by a data science researcher, the audience has other-than-usual expectations. Pune-based Niranjan Pedanekar, who does theatre alongside his job at the Tata Research Development and Design Center, seems to have factored in audience anticipation of a different treatment. His Hindi-Urdu-English adaptation of the Pulitzer-nominated Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo presents two actors who play opposing personality facets of a tiger. He says halving the tiger's character into two, without making any changes to the script, is his way of showing the dichotomy inside the tiger's brain. The segregation is akin to the clustering of mathematical data he undertakes at his day job as a principal scientist who works on algorithms to extract insights. "In my successive readings of the lines attributed to the tiger, I sensed one side was irritated about being trapped, and the other was remorseful. That's why I thought of splitting the big cat into two," says Pedanekar, now readying for the play's summer season shows after the opening in Pune.