A community feeling

Atif Ally Dagman performs the play as a solo act

In January last year, life started handing lemons to the everyman protagonist in a play that will be staged online this weekend, called Miah-Boy Diaries.
He first lost his job with an advertising agency. Then, even as he was trying to pick up the pieces, the pandemic dealt a further blow to his professional pursuits.

Suddenly, he found himself in isolation, with all the time in the world to come to grips with the existential crisis he was facing. Someone advised him to keep a diary to help gain some succour in this difficult period. So, he did. And in the meantime, he also found the notebooks that his great-grandfather would keep in the 1920s and '30s. It documented what the social milieu of the Muslim man's life was like back then, which gave our protagonist a perspective of his own identity, thus helping him chart a new direction. That journey he embarks on - and the eventual resolution he reaches - completes the narrative that this solo act builds.

Mumbai-based Atif Ally Dagman is the one-man army who conceptualised and wrote it, and who also performs the protagonist's role. He tells us that the play is a musical with five songs that take the plot forward, showing how music becomes a coping mechanism for the lead character. Dagman performs all these rock-themed tracks live, and he also tells us that the play is partly autobiographical. "But it's not just about my personal experiences. A lot of young people had to navigate through the isolation that the pandemic brought about. It's a universal story of someone who is trying to discover himself," the creator clarifies, adding that though the plot questions what it means to be Muslim in today's day and age, it doesn't cater to any one community.

Yet, a part of what helps the protagonist turn life's lemons into lemonade is the way he discovers his existence within the spectrum of his religious identity. It helps him ditch his failed corporate interests altogether to build a new professional career. What does that career entail? Well, that's an answer which might reveal too much. So, it's best if you actually watch the play to find out more about Miah-Boy Diaries.

On April 9 and 10, 7 pm
Log on to insider.in
Cost Rs 250