Just the job

The new comedy by the acclaimed Indian Ink Theatre Company employs a choir of temps to show what it's like to be a faceless worker in the office of an international corporation. 

- LINDA HERRICK

According to Greek mythology, King Sisyphus of Ephyra committed the frightful crime of defying the gods. Instead of a swift execution, his punishment was eternal, trapping him in a cycle of pushing an enormous boulder up a hill in the underworld.

As soon as Sisyphus reached the top, the rock rolled back down, and his toils began again.

The wisdom of the ancient Greeks flows through time, and the story of Sisyphus has become a metaphor for humankind’s search for purpose, an existential conundrum explored in French philosopher Albert Camus’ 1942 essay, The Myth of Sisyphus.

He argued that the only way to cope with the “Sisyphean task” of an endless, futile routine was to create a delusion that it was meaningful.

Sisyphus could have cheated the gods again, by choosing madness or death. But he kept on rolling that boulder. Therefore, Camus argued, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

One will never know. But Camus’ essay has become a key reference point in Indian Ink Theatre Company’s new comedy, Dirty Work: An Ode to Joy. The company’s 11th production, it features 22 choral singers, three actors and a pianist, and transposes the myth of Sisyphus to an open-plan accounting office in New Zealand.

The office is a tiny cog in an international tech corporation called Sisyphus Global Solutions, based in Bangalore. Its employees range from the middle manager to the contract cleaner, who usually works alone in the wee hours of each day.

The dull mood of the office is disrupted at intervals by Zoom appearances from the big boss, played by Indian Ink’s co-founder, writer and actor Jacob Rajan, who describes Camus’ essay as “weirdly hopeful”.