Suni Unsuni is an experimental one-man play written and performed by Imran Mushter Nafees. We had the privilege of hosting this performance at iO - The Space on 23rd Nov 2019.

Here’s our review.

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It's not the moments; it's the forgotten lengths of time between the moments that give life its distinct form.

Suni Unsuni is a bold experimental play by Imran Mushter Nafees that explores the dark, unseen recesses of human experience stretching between its landmarks; between a promise and its fulfillment; departing and arriving; dying and being dead.

The set effortlessly provokes a sense of decay and dread; of something meaningful now ceasing to be. A chess set with a single pawn standing on a board full of fallen pieces. Piles of paperback books on the table and the cafe counter, with Siddharth Kara's 'Bonded Labor' on top. Stools stacked carelessly in the corner. Even the pictures in the seating area are hung upside down, drawing the audience into the scene.

Nafees plays the character and the narrator, protagonist and antagonist of his own creation. The performance glides smoothly between diegetic and non-diegetic parts, and touches upon a strange dimension in the middle; blurring the line between performing and living.

The play lasts an hour with limited movement across the stage, and long silences between terse lines. The performance feels tedious at places. This appears deliberate, subverting the Hitchcockian perspective of drama as life with the boring bits cut out. A life without the 'boring bits' isn't life.

Imran Mushter Nafees's 'Suni Unsuni' is a quiet examination of a tense, indeterminate waiting period in life. It's a subversive, soul-shaking performance that takes the audience into the dark sulci of uncertainty between momentous occurrences; making the interlude momentous in itself.