In The Plague, Albert Camus describes the town of Oran as a place where life revolved around business, with weekends sensibly reserved for simple pleasures. This familiar routine was suddenly disrupted by the appearance of dead rats, marking the beginning of an irreversible shift. These Brief Encounters takes this opening chapter as a starting point before turning its gaze toward our present reality—the world we now inhabit in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.
How do we respond to a world that has been irrevocably altered? How do we process the weight of this new reality, both as individuals and as a collective?
Raka Maitra first picked up The Plague years ago, assuming such events were relics of the past. It felt too dark, too distant, and she never finished it. When COVID-19 struck, she returned to its pages and found unsettling parallels—the eerie familiarity of a crisis that strips away illusions and exposes the raw truth of who we are. The pandemic hasn’t changed us as much as it has revealed us.
In creating These Brief Encounters, Raka sought to bring together elements that might not typically coexist. She envisioned something grand and traditional, yet infused with abstraction—an interplay of the familiar and the unexpected. This vision led Chowk to collaborate with Siong Leng Musical Association, weaving the rich musical heritage of Nanyin with a movement vocabulary deeply rooted in Odissi but unlike anything the company has explored before.
The result is a work that reflects the times we live in—both beautiful and bizarre. And now, Chowk waits to see how you, the audience, will respond.