Manuwansa grows up in a remote unknown part of the country and comes to the city. The play starts on his first day of his job as a garbage collector. Manuwansa comes across a human leg, freshly cut–off from the knee down lying in the rubbish in the street. Distressed, he runs away yelling asking for help. From this point on the whole story unfolds from the perspective of this shocked outsider confronting this very dramatic situation and his search for the truth behind the incident of the leg.
Manuwansa goes to the police station and complains to everyone about the mutilated leg, only to find that no one cares about a leg except himself. Eventually this case becomes “Manuwansa’s problem”. He is manipulated by everyone for their own purposes and eventually loses his job and everything he owns. However, Manuwansa manages to put a court case together against the Chief Defence Officer. The court hearing is absurd, a little crazy, not naturalistic, and one feels that at any given time anything could happen (e.g. someone could come and hit the judge with a chair). At the same time the judge is trying to enforce some discipline and order. What happens at the court? After so many misunderstandings and misinterpretations the judge finds that he can’t understand the most obvious facts and that in the whole court only Manuwansa is shocked and has a complaint about the leg. Nobody else, including the police and other witnesses, show any concern. They begin to question, “Is Manuwansa normal? Or is the rest of the world disabled? Who is normal and who is abnormal? Is Manuwansa normal and the rest of the world abnormal or vice versa?”
The judge begins by asking, “are there 5 people here who can give evidence?” After a silence he asks again, “Are there 3 people who saw the incident of the leg and will they come forward to give evidence?” Then after a further pause he asks, “is there even ONE……………...” The inspector in charge speaks up, “there is no-one I’m sure,” and pointing accusingly to Manuwansa claims, “I will prove it to you.You go to the audience and find someone for yourself.. ….if you can ...” Then, going to the audience Manuwansa gives a very sensitive, anguished description of his predicament and invites them to come forward. When no one comes forward he becomes frustrated and begs the audience……..”You saw the leg. Why don’t you come?” Finally, Manuwansa goes to almost every member in the audience, and making eye contact with them, pleads, “You have seen the leg why don’t you come.”
There are two possible endings: "Some-one comes to the stage", and as happens in some shows, lots of the audience come to the stage because they have confused theatre life with real life. In such a case, if someone comes to the stage with Manuwansa, some invisible man in the audience will shoot Manuwansa dead on the stage.
"If no-one comes to the stage" Manuwansa will be sent to jail.
