I had been intending to do a play for a while, and that search took over a year of reading several plays from across the world and the country. My interest lay in shaping a voice as a theatre practitioner.

Avalanche turned out to be that play. It excited me as much for its theme as for its performative potential. My professional training is as an actor but I have directed plays before and after my stint at the NSD. As an actor, one's work is focused on performing a character, and there is restricted opportunity to engage with other aspects of theatre-making. I had been missing the joy and challenge of creating, collaborating, and bringing a story with my vision to audiences. The moment I read Avalanche, I knew this was the text that would give me the opportunity I was searching for. 

In the current climate, the suffocation is so palpable with (the problems of) that which can be said, cannot be said, and who could take offence with whatever is said - these concerns have been slowly silencing us all. Avalanche appealed emotionally as well as intellectually to me. Its central theme of not only being silenced but internalising and cohabiting with that silence has a special resonance in our time.

The play's focus on silence and silencing is why I've worked on aural textures in the production, be it through actors' whispered speech or an immersive soundscape. Its parable-like quality, where characters have no names and the place remains unspecified, lends the play a universality which echoes across cultures and time.