City of Gardens

Synopsis

Nostalgia can be defined as a longing for a home that never existed. The city is no exception; its image and geography shifting throughout its history. It emerges as a palimpsest, where traces of earlier lives persist even as they are overwritten by the imperatives of development. 

City of Gardens reimagines Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard in neoliberal Bangalore. The play features Estelle Rozario, returning to her childhood home and confronting the possibility of its loss - a space bound up in grief and memory. 

Asif, the son of the estate’s former gardener-now-developer, returns offering a vision of transformation that would reshape the estate entirely. Their encounter brings into tension competing nostalgias. Surrounding them are voices that bring attention to the economic, ecological, and social changes bearing down on the city.

As the fate of the estate is decided, the play follows the complex relationships between people and places, while analysing linear notions of time.