The Travellers of Barzakh, a Neo-Absurd play presented by Peathre Baraye’ Kasheer (TfK), was staged on 16 December at Tagore Hall, drawing a full-house audience despite the harsh Kashmiri winter, with night temperatures dipping close to –4°C. The show was performed in the late afternoon, a time that subtly echoed the philosophical condition the play inhabits—poised between arrival and departure, light and darkness, certainty and suspension. The packed auditorium stood as a testament to the audience’s commitment to serious, reflective theatre, even under extreme weather conditions.
Originally written in Urdu and later reformed in English, The Travellers of Barzakh is written by Arsh Mushtaq and unfolds in a liminal realm between life and afterlife, memory and forgetting, silence and speech. Barzakh in the play is not merely a metaphysical idea but a lived condition of waiting, where existence is held in suspension and meaning is endlessly deferred. Rejecting linear narrative and psychological realism, the production employs fragmented dialogue, ritualised movement, repetition, and extended stillness to interrogate systems of control, obedience, surveillance, and the gradual erosion of inner life. While deeply rooted in a Kashmiri philosophical sensibility, the play resonates strongly with contemporary global anxieties.
The work is grounded in Neo-Absurd theatre, an evolving form that moves beyond classical Absurdism. Rather than simply presenting the collapse of meaning, Neo-Absurd interrogates the forces—social, political, digital, and existential—that actively manufacture this collapse. In this form, silence becomes language, waiting becomes action, and performance functions as inquiry rather than representation. The stage, stripped of excess, becomes a site for thought, endurance, and ethical attention.
The performance marked the culmination of a 12-day intensive theatre workshop conducted by the TfK Repertory, held over six weekends from the first Saturday of November to the second Sunday of December. The workshop space was generously provided by AbiGuzar Art Space. The process began with individual explorations focusing on presence, breath, voice, movement, and stillness, which were later woven into a collaborative structure around the Neo-Absurd text. The final production retained the integrity of each performer’s inner journey while forming a cohesive and disciplined stage work.
The performers—young students aged 18 to 23—appeared on stage for the first time, yet displayed remarkable restraint, control, and philosophical engagement. Zoya Qazi as Bokut, Sania Mukhtar as Nayib, Faizaan as Qismat, and Saqlain Syed as Potcs delivered performances marked by precision and maturity, earning sustained applause from the audience. Their training under the TfK Repertory was evident in their disciplined physicality and their refusal to over-perform meaning, allowing silence and stillness to speak with force.
The production was supported by a committed backstage and technical team comprising Reyaz Mir, Bilal Baghat, Tahir Najar, Faizan Bhat, Junaid A, Saqlain Sauleh and Daamin Arsh, with active guidance and support from Dr. Zamir Ahmad and Shahjehan Baghat, ensuring a seamless execution of the performance.
The audience included intellectuals, renowned artists and writers, academicians, scholars, and a large number of students. Notably, nearly sixty percent of the audience consisted of young people, signalling a renewed engagement with serious, idea-driven theatre among the new generation. The performance received widespread appreciation for its rigorous stagecraft and philosophical depth and was widely seen as a harbinger of change—both in form and in the emergence of young voices committed to reflective theatrical practice.
The Travellers of Barzakh does not seek to entertain or resolve. It invites the audience to pause, to wait, and to enter a space where meaning does not arrive easily, but lingers. Following its strong reception in Srinagar, the production is set to return for future performances, with details to be announced.
