For the love of life, unstring a bit!

Dear sea, I can hear you from my bed in the hotel room...I have come to say goodbye,” poetically writing aloud, Soledad bids farewell to her holiday destination.

Holiday Out (Postcard from the Sea) a monodrama encircling the life of
a single female character is a play by the Spanish playwright Itziar Pascual. Quintessential to her style, the set was minimalist in nature with a striking youthful appeal in the script.

Adapted for the Delhi audience for the 7th Delhi International Arts Festival, a young ensemble of theatre artistes enthralled the audience at Instituto Cervantes over the weekend. Through the chatty philosophical meanderings to a sense of attachment to a recent vacation, Soledad, the protagonist of the play, gives us reasons to laugh, ponder and cathartically engage in her experiences.

“Soledad could be anywhere in the world, changing her name, placing her in a known setting would have been pointless,” expresses the young director, Annapoorna Dasgupta. Ergo, Soledad, the solo character in the play finds herself dropped into chaos post her idyllic stay in the paradise (her holiday).

Returning from a rejuvenating trip to the seaside, Soledad finds herself stuck at an airport where she awaits the arrival of her missing bag. In the midst of that whirlwind, she picks up a fight with the airport attendant, engages in conversations with herself, recaptures the memory of her vacation and keeps on talking about her mother.

Her missing bag becomes a metaphor for her life, as she dwells on her memories, unyieldingly holding onto them just like her bag. She even equates the loss of her luggage to the loss of her mother.

A pacey storyline, Soledad’s quick-witted character and the instantaneous change in sets, enables the audience to vicariously live her experience. One often finds oneself stuck in a limbo, just like Soledad.

“Itziar’s characters constantly look out for companionship, find themselves in a web of insecurities, wade through the dilemma of  being independent, and tied to the cultural ethos at the same instance,” sums up the director, describing the reasons that fascinate her about the work of the famous Spanish playwright.

In the end, Soledad hails a cab, and starts a conversation with the driver. When he asks her about her bag, she says, “I like to travel light!” dissipating the entire drama into an ethereal and uplifting experience, in a moment.