Boris Nikitin’s Essay on Dying is not a performance in the traditional sense. It is an intimate confession, a philosophical rumination and a stark confrontation with mortality. Nikitin is a theatre director, author, and curator of the biennial festival It’s The Real Thing – Basel Documentary Platform. His works often blur the boundaries between reality and fiction, between personal narrative and theatrical performance; a theme that permeates Essay on Dying.
Organized by the English and Creative Writing Department in partnership with the Embassy of Switzerland in India and Bhutan, the performance saw an impressive turnout with the venue nearly packed. From the outset, the audience was asked to refrain from taking photos or videos—an instruction that felt entirely appropriate, given the deeply personal nature of the piece.
Written and performed by Nikitin himself, the one-man play unfolded on a bare stage, with only a chair at its centre. He walked in, barefoot, clad in a simple white T-shirt and grey pants, carrying a few sheets of paper—his script.
The play revolved around Nikitin’s father’s battle with ALS (Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), a degenerative disease that gradually stripped him of control over his own body. The performance, however, was not just a retelling of loss but a reflection on the body itself—what it means to inhabit one, how it transforms, how identity and physical form are interwoven. The evening’s performance, then, was a tapestry of textual layers, of narrative slipping between truth and invention.
At times, the performance felt like a meditation, punctuated by moments of silence—Nikitin paused, shifted in his seat, cleared his throat and stared into the audience. The physicality of the performance, particularly the act of setting each page down upon finishing it, contributed to this mood of contemplation. Each sheet placed on the floor became a tangible marker of passing time, of memory released, where repetition and pauses create an atmosphere of dwelling. These silences spoke as much as his words, building tension and drawing the audience further into his introspective journey. The lighting played a crucial role in this, with white lights focusing on his figure—neither harsh nor subtle, but precise. As the play progressed, the light narrowed, isolating him, emphasising the weight of his words.
Reality, as Nikitin described it, is a fragile, constructed thing. He conceived of it as “ a fraud or fake or rumour told on and on until it has solidified,” drawing parallels between the performance of selfhood and the ways in which people shape their own narratives to survive. ” - He reflects on how the external world often misrepresents his inner self, noting that “the world outside and my world inside are not synchronized.” His body, alien to him, forms a version of himself for others, shaping their opinions and, in turn, how he perceives himself—a process that, as he suggests, can drive one to madness.
Through his father’s story, he grappled with the fundamental question: does one have power over their body? He recounted how his father, a passionate athlete, initially tried to separate his selfhood from his illness—“It’s not me that is sick, it’s my body,” his father had said. This act of turning illness into a fiction, not to deny it but to reclaim some agency over it, became a recurring theme in the performance. Nikitin wove this idea into broader discussions on identity, touching on his own experiences with queerness and the act of coming out—how it requires one to reject imposed realities and construct their own. His queerness became a lens through which he understood bodily autonomy and self-definition. Coming out, like confronting mortality, involved taking control of a narrative that others sought to define for him.
The performance also reflected on the act of vulnerability. Nikitin described the act of speaking an unsaid truth as a form of coming out— an appropriation of fear, a declaration of self.“Every human being who says something unsaid is coming out in some way,” he noted, emphasizing how this act of exposure makes one visible, vulnerable, and transformative. In this light, he argued, “outing is not just a right, but a duty.”
This theme of bodily detachment extended to his discussion of his father’s illness. He described how his father’s self-worth had been deeply tied to his physical ability—his passion for athletics, his rigorous care for his body—only for it to ultimately betray him. His father’s gradual physical decline, from walking to relying on a wheelchair, led to difficult conversations about assisted dying.
At one point, after discussing his father’s contemplation of the act, Nikitin fell silent. The audience sat in uneasy anticipation—was this a pause, or had the performance ended? Someone shifted in their seat, a water bottle crackled, the faint hum of a distant buzz filled the silence. After nearly three minutes, he resumed.
His father had once said he would choose assisted dying when he could no longer walk. But after Nikitin convinced him otherwise, he underwent a stomach tube procedure to assist in eating. A microbe—“the smallest form of human life,” as Nikitin described it—infected him. “A few days later, he’s dead.” The final page fell to the floor. He looked up, face contorted, before walking away. The lights went out.
When the lights came back on, he bowed. The audience erupted in applause, though the weight of what had just transpired hung heavy in the air.
“Those who remain silent remain alone. Those who don’t, don’t. That is the wager. That is the propaganda.” A line the audience carried with them beyond the dimly lit BlackBox. In the end, Essay on Dying was not merely a performance—it was an experience, a reckoning with life, death, and the stories we tell to make sense of both.
[Edited by Teista Dwivedi and Srijana Siri]
Comments