AfterLives
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Project Details
Status:
Completed
Year:
2023
Location:
Mumbai, Delhi
Consultants:
Contractor - Sandeep
Design Team:
Areen Attari,
Shivani Sampat,
Miqdad Shirazi
Photo Credits:
PYHT Team
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AfterLives
The set for writer and producer Faezeh Jalali’s play Afterlies was conceived as a spatial response to the play’s central themes of life, death, and the surreal idea of “afterlies.” The narrative unfolds across shifting realities: three elderly characters lie in hospital beds, locked in arguments about what might await them beyond death. Each clings to their personal vision of the afterlife, only to be proven wrong when they eventually pass on and experience an afterlife that defies their expectations. To support this duality of existence, the design was divided into two contrasting worlds—the tangible reality of the hospital ward and the imaginative, disorienting space of the afterlife.
The “real” world was intentionally kept sparse and familiar, represented by folding stretchers with plain white bedding to evoke the sterile, functional atmosphere of a hospital. This setting grounded the audience in a recognizable environment, one that emphasized fragility, waiting, and human vulnerability. In stark contrast, the afterlife was envisioned as an abstract, impossible space, inspired by M. C. Escher’s painting Relativity. Here, the intention was to create a world where gravity no longer behaved predictably and where perspective itself seemed unstable. This became the seed for an infinity glass box—a visual metaphor for endlessness, disorientation, and the paradoxical freedom and confinement of life after death. To bring this vision to life, we designed a cube-like frame constructed from lightweight painted MDF, open at the top to allow flexibility in rigging and lighting. The inner surfaces were lined with MDF with mirror film on top, creating an effect of infinite repetition. For the front face, a two-way mirror would have been the ideal material; however, practical considerations such as transport, assembly, and weight led us to reimagine the surface using clear acrylic fitted with reflective window film. Suspended from the ceiling with cables, lighting location and illumination also was planned such that this façade offered both transparency and reflection—allowing the audience to see within, while simultaneously bouncing light back to generate the illusion of endless depth.
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To enhance the conceptual depth of the infinity box, we introduced steps with arch-like forms that played with perception—one appearing to descend while another climbed alongside it, both moving in the same direction yet altering the viewer’s sense of orientation. These surreal architectural elements were made from interlocking MDF components, designed for quick assembly and disassembly, making them practical for transport and installation. The fusion of inventive structure and imaginative form transformed the set into more than a backdrop, it became a living environment that embodied the play’s exploration of relativity, shifting perspectives, and the limitless nature of the afterlife. The result was a set that shifted between two worlds: one grounded, mundane, and mortal, and the other uncanny, unbounded, and infinite. This spatial juxtaposition not only echoed the play’s narrative structure but also invited the audience to experience the fragile tension between certainty and doubt, belief and disbelief, life and afterlife. The hospital beds tethered the characters to their earthly bodies, while the infinity box extended an invitation to enter a realm where imagination and perspective could collapse into each other—an architectural embodiment of the play’s comedic yet profound meditation on what lies beyond.
