Exit-stance is a story of an Indian immigrant who is in his 90s and living in a nursing home in this country. He has not visited India in some six-decades. He rambles on about his living in a nursing home, life, death, identity, loneliness, his many phobias and pet peeves. “A dark... comedy of existential angst about a crude, foulmouthed and frustrated curmudgeon. Profane, profound, poetic, humorous and heartbreaking and most importantly provocative!”
It is a remarkable play about aging. An old man, born in India, who has lived most of his life in the US, now spends his final days in a nursing home that provides him with assisted living that dehumanizes him as it prolongs his life. Important is the central character's universality. His sense of rootlessness...his loneliness relieved only by a few memories and snippets of poetry recalled from the classical literature of his youth places him in one of the grand traditions of literature represented best by Beckett.
The central character’s reflection on immigrants in the U.S. and how they carry their past with them and the issue of the two cultures is very insightful...The character is wrestling with significant issues and raging about them in intellectual and angry ways that …will hit many people in audience right between the eyes... The play is complex, but it does grow and as it progresses it becomes more and more intimate, and then finally explodes.
It is humorous and heartbreaking. It is a one-man tour de force of anger and frustration relieved by passages of poetic beauty and humor. One can call it a darkish comedy but still a comedy with a fanciful tweak.
First performed on April 14, 2007 at Northmont High School Auditorium, Clayton, Ohio with Mohan Dali in the lead role.
Exit-stance was selected for performances during the Cincinnati Fringe Festival between May 28th and June 8th 2008. The lead role was performed by Dr. Raghawa Gowda.
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