Sunday, May 20, 2001		Article

Naseer’s exposure to a new world
By Kunal Khurana

HE started off with theatre, moved to cinema and just when he was peaking in popularity, retracted his steps and has now settled down on stage. His latest play in Hindi, Ismat Aap Ke Naam is running to full houses wherever it is staged in India.

Internationally, Naseeruddin Shah is playing two characters in Peter Brooks’ version of Hamlet — that of courtier Resencrantz and the other, of the Player King. The play has taken him through the UK, Japan, Canada and of course, France.

"I had done a workshop with Peter Brooks in Paris," explains India’s most versatile actor. "Later, he contacted me, asking if I was interested in doing a research project on Shakespeare. I was absolutely thrilled and said I could give up everything for the chance to work with him."

Naseer shifted base from Mumbai and became part of an eight-member group of actors from different parts of the world. The project involved studying plays of Shakespeare and experimenting with various modes of enactment.

The exposure opened Naseer’s eyes to a world so very different from the theatre workshops he has been associated with in Mumbai — or for that matter, the acting classes he attended, both at the National School of Drama in Delhi and the Film and Television Institute in Pune.

That initial training helped him stage some outstanding plays like Witness to the Prosecution, Dear Liar and Julius Caesar in Mumbai and Delhi. With Benjamin Gilani and other co-actors, he set up a theatre company, Motley, which is now almost 20 years into the business of producing plays.

But Paris was an altogether different experience: "I not only rediscovered Shakespeare, but read him far more extensively than I earlier had. I read so many more plays and even found that Shakespeare had written a play called Henry VIII. I had heard of Henry V, but not Henry VIII."

After working all day, Naseer would take a walk around the city with his friends: "Something great would be happening at every street corner. There were places to visit like the Versailles, or even the chance to see an exquisite Picasso at the Louvre!"

As for Ismat Aap Ke Naam, which is an adaptation of three stories by Ismat Chugtai in Hindi, Naseer remarks: "We have always faced the complaint that there aren’t enough good Hindi plays to go by. So our theatre company, Motley, decided to enact them."

The play is actually my tribute to the renowned Urdu litterateur who had begun writing from the age of 13. "We are not taking liberties with her work, not changing it, but just telling it as it is," he informs. "The play is set in families that I have been brought up in and based on a milieu I am familiar with."

Oddly though, it was only last year that Naseer was introduced to Chugtai’s writing (in translation) with Mughal Bachcha, a story of the decline of the so-called successors of the Mughals in Uttar Pradesh at the time of the British Raj.

"Mughal Bachcha, which was her first story that I read, moved me to tears," narrates Naseer. "I could have kicked myself for not reading her work earlier. From that point I knew my search for a Hindustani play had ended. I included Chhui Mui and Gharwali in the three-part play."

While Naseer appears in Gharwali, his wife, Ratna narrates Mughal Bachcha. The biggest surprise is his daughter, Heeba, who makes her stage debut with Chhui Mui — the story of a child being born in a train compartment. This is the first time the three have come together to act in a single play.

In a couple of months, Naseer will return to Paris, this time to work with Brooks on adaptations of two other Shakespearean plays — The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And by December, he will be back in India to play a eunuch in Waman Kendre’s Tilwali.

"For the first time, I will be doing something as different as this," he exclaims. "It is a big challenge for me — after Sprat. It is no joke getting under the skin of a eunuch — the dialogue delivery, body language, mannerisms... must look very real. I don’t believe in making a caricature! — MF