“The Elephant in the Room” is the name of the one-woman show at Azuka Theatre, written and performed by Priyanka Shetty. She is a young Indian woman who decides to leave the restrictions surrounding her life in India and come to the United States to pursue a dream. Trained as an engineer, she wants to be an actor. She also wants to escape from a closed society and shine in America, the land of opportunity. This is the story of her journey.
In India, she tells us how she was called an elephant and a fool. She was criticized for her weight. She is a second-class citizen because she is not a man. In America, things will be different, she believes. And when she gets a scholarship to attend the MFA program in acting at the University of Virginia, she is overjoyed.
In the 80-minute play, there are many different stories of how she tries to assimilate. But she soon finds that life is no easier than it was in India. Though she successfully loses her accent, she is still a woman of color. Is she just a token at Virginia? Will she ever be taken seriously?
It is most engaging to follow her story, from her boyfriend at home who encouraged her to follow her dream, to the auditions she endured, to the panic she feels when dealing with her family. In actual time, she is backstage, trying to convince herself to perform the play that we learn she has written. Her parents, who constantly told her not to pursue acting, have come from India, to be in the audience. She is full of anxiety- ready to quit.
This is Priyanka Shetty’s play, and she is portraying herself. While she is a dynamic performer with lots of energy and I found her stories most interesting, they didn’t grab me on an emotional level. The substance was there but I felt that Shetty needed to slow down and let the moments sink in. It seemed more like an essay about her life rather than a memoir. “The Elephant in the Room” has been performed extensively in recent years around the country. I couldn’t help but ask myself if Suli Holum’s direction was significantly different from other productions of the play as it was the recipient of many awards.
Still, I appreciated the important personal and universal issues that she presented and was glad to have seen it. It is Shetty’s debut as a playwright, and I look forward to more by this talented artist.
“The Elephant in the Room” by Priyanka Shetty at Azuka Theatre, at the Louis Bluver Theatre at the Drake, 302 S. Hicks St. Philadelphia, PA 19102, 215-563-1100, AzukaTheatre.org Extended thru November 19, 2023
Philadelphia Theater Reviews by Frank Burd 