In the first weekend of July, every member of Naseeruddin Shah’s family happened to be onstage in Mumbai. Shah was acting in A Walk in the Woods , directed by his actress-wife Ratna Pathak Shah. His daughter Heeba was directing a Hindustani play, younger son Vivaan was helming a dramatic performance of English short stories, and elder son Imaad had a music gig. And, as if to underscore Shah’s pivotal role in the theatre scene, that weekend also threw in a performance of Sapan Saran’s Waiting for Naseer , in which two actors have to choose which of them gets to catch a show by their favourite actor, Shah.
Having a family of thespians isn’t something Shah had planned, nor was his success. “In the film world, I am deeply grateful that I’ve been able to spend 40 years of my life doing something which was as intangible as a dream when I was a kid,” he says. Even as he prepares to show Jerome Kilty’s Dear Liar , based on the relationship between George Bernard Shaw and Mrs Patrick Campbell, at The Hindu Theatre Festival, Shah says it’s a privilege just, “to continue producing plays that I want to do”. “Engaging with great writing, which one does not get to do in the film world, is what has kept me going and kept me stimulated and what has contributed to my awareness and knowledge of life and the world,” he says.
His favourite works
Even so, Shah considers his most meaningful work to have been Shoaib Mansoor’s 2007 film Khuda Kay Liye , one of Pakistan’s highest-grossing films.
Shah plays a learned cleric who addresses issues such as the representation of humans in art. “It gave me a lot of answers to questions that have bothered me because I was brought up in an orthodox Muslim household,” Shah says. He also considers the 1983 Bollywood film Masoom his best film for its “modern approach to the family” that still holds relevance over four decades later. Nothing matches up to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot , the first play from Motley, the group he formed with the likes of Benjamin Gilani in 1979. “It’s the most important play written in the twentieth century,” Shah says, “It states the human condition better than any philosophical treatise and it’s been our most successful production in that we spent nothing on it.”
Shah’s process of working has evolved, but the first step has always been by instinct, choosing which play or film to work on based on his first reading of a script. Parts in a Motley production are assigned after the group reads the script together, and sometimes they begin even staging the action before the set is designed. Satyadev Dubey, director of Dear Liar , was one of Shah’s biggest influences. “Aesthetics were of no concern to Dubey; he believed in pulling the intestines of the work out,” Shah says.
As much as he enjoys Western plays, Shah says it’s the work of Indian authors that particularly resonate. “I get the smell of the earth when I do something in Urdu, in my own language,” he says, “I don't have to make the effort to be Bernard Shaw.”
The majority of the audiences for his plays are the youth, much to Shah’s surprise and delight. “I'm really happy so many youngsters are involved in theatre today,” Shah says, particularly because “they are writing original stuff on subjects that matter to them, using a living language that’s spoken in cities.” The craft of playwriting has not grown over the years, Shah says, but things are beginning to change. “There’s always been this complaint by theatre people in India that we don’t have enough plays, and there’s been this primal complaint by playwrights about who do we write plays for when nobody’s doing theatre. The great deal of original writing being done particularly in alternative spaces is helping resolve that,” he says.
Ratna’s role
In Dear Liar , Shah will take the stage opposite Ratna, in a two-hander that they have performed intermittently across two decades.
“Her feedback is invaluable to me, Shah says, “I wouldn’t be able to function without her. It’s only in a play like Einstein that I’ve actually given her the credit of being co-director, the fact is she has been associate director in almost everything I’ve done.”
(Saumya Ancheri is Assistant Web Editor for National Geographic Traveller India)
The Hindu Theatre Fest 2016
The Title Sponsor of the event is YES BANK. The Associate Sponsor is Telangana Tourism. The gift partner is Terra Earthfood. The Radio Partner is Chennai Live 104.8. The Merchandise Partner is Focus Art Gallery and the Event Manager is evam.
