By Priyanka Desirazu

Different in form and setting, the JustUs Repertory theater productions written by Gowri Ramnarayan, Black Lilies and Enchantment, shared a common thread. They both invited audiences into intimate worlds shaped by memory, music, and the quiet power of human connection. April felt like a month when these worlds of artistic grace opened themselves in Columbus, carried here by Dhvani’s commitment to creating spaces where art feels close and alive. It was a gentle reminder of Dhvani’s role in our community – creating spaces where art feels close. Where stories travel far and still feel familiar, and audiences leave with something they didn’t know they were looking for.

Performed in the warmth of a private home, Black Lilies unfolded like a conversation overheard in confidence – gentle, unhurried, and deeply affecting. The dinner theatre setting created an atmosphere of closeness that perfectly matched the play’s emotional timbre. Delicious food, soft lighting, and the hum of quiet anticipation set the stage for a performance that felt personal in every sense. Yohan Chacko and Aarabi Veeraraghavan lived their roles with such ease that the boundary between actor and character seemed to dissolve. Yohan’s portrayal of the Serbo‑Hungarian Nobel laureate was subtle and textured, revealing layers of fatigue, humor, and vulnerability. He carried his characters the way a seasoned musician carries a familiar instrument – with respect, ease, and an instinctive understanding of its voice.

Aarabi’s young Tamil schoolteacher brought innocence without naïveté – a moral clarity that anchored the play’s emotional arc. The contrast between innocence and world‑weariness stayed with me, a delicate tension that felt both fragile and inevitable. The airport setting revealed itself as a metaphor for suspended identity and suspended time, a place where one stands briefly outside the story of one’s own life. When the final moment arrived, there was a collective sense of wanting to linger a little longer in that suspended world.

Children sat in the front row, completely absorbed, and later shared thoughtful reflections with the gathering, a sign that the play had struck a chord across generations. When young minds respond with such enthusiasm, you know the work has reached a rare and honest place. Black Lilies took root in that living room and the audience felt every petal unfold.

A few days later, the McConnell Arts Center filled to capacity for Enchantment, a theatrical portrait of Pandit Ravi Shankar. The auditorium buzzed with curiosity and by the end, that curiosity had transformed into admiration and delight. Yohan Chacko’s range was on full display as he stepped into the role of Ravi Shankar with the same natural ease he brought to the Eastern European Nobel laureate in Black Lilies. It was remarkable to watch him inhabit two such different worlds, one shaped by global trauma and introspection, the other by music, creativity, and cultural legacy, with equal conviction. His transformation into Ravi Shankar carried a presence that held the room, and the play itself opened doors into Ravi Shankar’s artistic universe, revealing nuances and stories that even longtime admirers may not have known. Just when you thought you understood the man behind the sitar, the play offered something new – a gesture, a memory, a moment of insight that deepened the portrait.

Bhavya Kumaran & Yohan Chacko

One of the quiet joys of these events was time shared with Gowri Ramnarayan herself – warm, gracious, and endlessly insightful. Her storytelling carries the discipline of a composer, shaped by a musician’s sense of breath and guided by a narrative instinct that moves with quiet choreographic intelligence. For instance, she allows a shawl in the play to hold a quiet shimmer of subtext, its presence subtle but unmistakably transformative – that is when you know a single object has opened another layer of the story. Her insights arrived with the softness of falling ash yet carried the weight of someone who has spent a lifetime tending to the fire beneath the art. Conversations wandered between theatre and travel – the thresholds of airports, the cities carried in memory – before circling back to the small pleasures of food: almond croissants that crumble like well‑loved pages, pheni* in its most ephemeral sweetness, multigrain crackers with their quiet austerity, and tiramisu, that gentle architecture of cream and coffee that lingers long after the last bite. It was a reminder that art is not separate from life; it is woven into the everyday textures of taste, memory, and shared experience.

Yohan Chacko & Dr Gowri Ramnarayan

Together, Black Lilies and Enchantment created a tapestry of intelligent storytelling that felt both intimate and expansive. One invited us into a quiet corner of an airport during a week when the world changed; the other opened a window into the luminous world of a musical legend. Both works felt like lanterns carried into the room – their quiet radiance opening into whole inner landscapes.

*Pheni is a form of vermicelli soaked in sweetened milk enjoyed in the Indian subcontinent.