There are some usual suspects that have found resonance with Naseeruddin Shah's theatre group Motley. George Bernard Shaw is one of them. Motley's latest production, BY GEORGE! will showcase the legendary writer's select work, including a poem titled English Pronounciation. The formidable actor-director dwells on his past and present interest in Shaw, and expresses his desire to work with younger and newer people in theatre. BY GEORGE! opens on 2nd April 2011 at the NCPA. Please click here to read more about the play.
Charulata
You have a special love for Irish playwrights, don't you?
(Laughs) I had read WAITING FOR GODOT in college and I did not understand a word of it. In my drama school again I did not understand it, and in fact wrote so in my exam. But then we decided to do the play and we engaged with it. It took us a year before we were confident enough to stage it, and in that year I realized that plays are meant to be performed and not to be read. You can't read a play for relaxation. As for Shaw, I'd seen ARMS AND THE MAN when I was in school. The production was done by the Kendals. Later in college, I performed in an amateur production of the play. It has been on my list of 'to do plays.' I also did HOW HE LIED TO HER HUSBAND in college. At the time it was a sad little college-level production. I wanted to revisit VILLAGE WOOING because Dubeyji's production (that was done at least 20 years ago) hardly did 10 shows. It was a wonderful and simple production and we've kept this one like that too. This production owes a lot to Dubeyji's original production. I very much wanted to do the part again and so did Ratna (Pathak Shah) but we both realized that we were too old. It would be ridiculous. The play would get completely different connotations. So I've chosen to do the play with two of my students and they have got me going because they started work on it themselves. We decided to perform VILLAGE WOOING, and thus found the companion piece to HOW HE LIED TO HER HUSBAND.
You've had a long, long association with Shaw through plays like DEAR LIAR, DON JUAN IN HELL, ANDROCLES AND THE LION and others. What is it about Shaw that makes you go back to him?
It's stating the obvious but I think Shaw is a great playwright. What I love most about his work are his wit, his use of language and the fact that his concerns are wider than, say Shakespeare. His perception of human beings and his ability to create magic with words is on the same level as Shakespeare's but his concerns have more depth. By that I mean the subtext of his plays is deeper than Shakespeare's. OTHELLO has no subtext, for example. If you look for deeper meanings in OTHELLO you are on very dangerous ground because it starts to read as a very racist play. Othello is basically a very stupid man who believes anything anyone tells him. He was stupid, not tragic. HAMLET perhaps, has resonance but something like AS YOU LIKE IT or TWELFTH NIGHT doesn't. JULIUS CAESAR does. Don't get me wrong. One's not knocking down old Mr. William Shakespeare at all. But firstly, the language Shaw uses comes easy to us Indians. We're used to elaborate phrasing.
But that also makes Shaw a difficult playwright to stage, in that he is very verbose...
Shaw teaches us an invaluable lesson- that for a great piece of writing to reveal itself, takes time. You have to keep at it, you know. The trouble with a lot of actors is they get satisfied the moment they've learnt their lines. They chuck away the script and strut about the stage, which they're dying to do. I'm not at all impressed by actors who can learn their lines quickly. It's no great achievement. Some people have the ability to do so, some don't. I've found, in fact, that those who take longer in getting their lines right, gain from the script. So I ask my actors to keep the script handy even when they know the words. Even then you'll find that after a few rehearsals they'll give up on the script. When you ask them to go back to the script, you'll find many little things they've missed out on. I believe that in a truly great play, every word is invaluable. There isn't a superfluous word. Not even the exclamations - the 'Ahs!' and 'Ohs'! Everything has its place and everything conveys something about the person saying it. That is why one enjoys doing Shaw because you don't get a handle on what he's saying for quite a while. It takes you a hell lot of effort just to comprehend the surface meaning. Yes, that's what happens, quite blatantly, in HOW HE LIED TO HER HUSBAND and in ARMS AND THE MAN, which I'm doing next.
We hear you will perform ARMS AND THE MAN for children as part of Summer Time at Prithvi. How does a play about Fabian philosophy work for children?
I think that children should be introduced to playwrights who are not completely incomprehensible. I don't think that children should be subjected to Edward Albee for example or Arthur Miller, though they are great playwrights. But children should see writers like Shaw so they learn the magic of language and they learn that theatre consists of something else apart from silly, painted backdrops, fat people falling down, and songs. To me, words and the person speaking them are the most important components of theatre.
True. But more and more we find that a number of children's plays focus on action and fewer dialogues...
I think it's very patronizing to underestimate children and their intelligence. Everybody is telling me, 'Which child will understand ARMS AND THE MAN?' Ok, they won't. But they'll retain something about it and that will stay with them. I saw ARMS AND THE MAN when I was about 8 or 9 years old in school, performed by Mr. Kendal and I thoroughly enjoyed it though I didn't understand it. A few years later I understood it a little more. By the time I did it in college I had understood it. It created my taste for Shaw. So who knows! One can't be too concerned about the outcome of one's work. One must be driven to do it and I feel driven to do Shaw.
In less than ten minutes both Dubeyji and Mr. Kendal - both your Gurus have featured in this conversation. Is BY GEORGE! a tribute to both of them?
Yes (smiles fondly). I hope I'm not in my dotage (laughs). I don't think that my attempts for these plays were satisfactory in the first instance and that's why I'm going back to them. So, yes you can say that these productions are homage to both Dubeyji and Mr. Kendal.
Shaw himself calls the plot of HOW HE LIED TO HER HUSBAND- with the wife, her lover and the husband, a 'stale' situation. How does a director tackle a script that verges on the hackneyed?
What gave me a clue was a biography, which I discovered in Canada - The Prizefighter and the Playwright. It is about a boxer, a heavyweight champion, Gene Tunny, who apparently had a long lasting friendship with Mr. Shaw. And Mr. Shaw was very fond of pugilism or boxing. He had tried boxing when he was a young man. So that gave me a clue to dealing with this play. It is farce; a broad farce. So why try doing it in a pseudo-pretentious style? We're going to milk it for laughs and we've put in a lot of stuff that purists might disapprove of but I don't give a fiddler's fuck for purists anyway. They hated my JULIUS CAESAR but I don't care. I did what I felt I should have done with that play.
English Pronounciation, the poem by Shaw is also not an easy poem to perform, let alone read. Did that require special attention?
Kenny Desai is working on that and it's amazing how he has memorized it because I would think it's the most difficult thing to memorize since one word has no connection with the next. Normally, actors give themselves a frame of thought to learn lines but there's nothing in this piece. It's great what he's done.
As a critic, Shaw made quite clear his displeasure for directors who chop scripts to suit their needs. At the same time, because of the verbosity, actors find it difficult to remember their lines. Have you taken any liberties with the plays?
We haven't edited anything. In fact I'm not in favour of being merciless towards the scripts. I think one should give the script an adequate chance and edit only after a few performances. It's only in the performance that you get to know whether some moments work or not; whether they're essential or not; whether they're superfluous or not. I don't believe in needlessly chopping the play. Great writing suits all times. That's what makes it great writing. You just have to give it a chance. I don't think you should strain to bring contemporariness to it. It's either there, or it's not. I don't see the point of doing JULIUS CAESAR in Gandhi caps or what not. Again, you don't have to wear Roman togas. It's the words that matter. And, BY GEORGE! is a production of words really, and fun words.
You have spoken about many productions that did not manage to have a long run. Do you wish that this production runs as long as say ISMAT AAPA... or DEAR LIAR?
No, that is the last thing that's on our minds. When we were doing DEAR LIAR, Dubeyji predicted it would run for ten years and I simply laughed. But it's lasted for longer. Almost 15 years now. ISMAT AAPA... has lasted for ten years. That is one of the lucky outcomes of the choices we have made. But we don't think on those terms. There are other plays, which we've had to close down and we don't brood on those. We're just happy that people want to see our work.
You've often said that Motley does not do original plays because there is a severe scarcity of original writing. But when you started acting you worked in original plays by Mahesh Elkunchwar, Dharamvir Bharti and you were surrounded by playwrights like Vijay Tendulkar, Badal Sircar, Girish Karnad...
Tendulkarji and the others were sort of reaching a dead end. Badal Sircar had given up, Adya Rangacharya had given up, Mohan Rakesh died, Girish Karnad had become an actor. So there was a kind of paucity. Mahesh (Elkunchwar) was the only upcoming writer then. There were people like Dr. Dharamvir Bharti but they didn't write often. So there was a shortage of original scripts. So Dubeyji started writing his own plays. God help us! (laughs). We were subjected to his plays. Yes, there was a shortage.
And you still feel that paucity...
There are a few people like Siddharth Kumar and Anuvab Pal who are trying things out, but I still think they're finding their feet as playwrights. I would go along with them, and I'd love to collaborate with them, provided the right thing came along.
What is 'the right thing?'
The right thing is to use the living language, and not to write exclusively in English, Hindi, Marathi or Gujarati, which young writers in Mumbai are trying to do, and that's very encouraging. One should try to tackle subjects with which they are immediately connected. They shouldn't talk about the truth of the cosmos. I wish everybody would stop trying to be another Samuel Beckett. I have faith and hope in the younger people who are doing theatre, if only because there are so many of them doing theatre. Their output is very varied. I see as much of it as I can. No matter what the quality of their work, I support them with unqualified regard and I'd always go along with them if they asked me to.
Yes, you have tried to encourage theatre activities among youngsters through your workshops and classes...
I don't think I'm encouraging them. I gain from them. I'm exploiting them. It rejuvenates me when I work with youngsters. It makes me feel good about myself. I feel younger. I love looking at the hopes and dreams in their eyes, and just being one with them.
You've declared that you have dedicated this year to theatre. Apart from these two plays, what else is on your mind?
There's my teaching work that goes side by side. And I don't see what else I can do. Not being a playwright, I can't create new plays. I wish I were a writer but I'm not. I do hope at some point to workshop with a group of actors and writers together. That is a dream. I don't know if it will really happen.
*Charulata enjoys watching theatre, and writing about it.
You have a special love for Irish playwrights, don't you?
We hear you will perform ARMS AND THE MAN for children as part of Summer Time at Prithvi. How does a play about Fabian philosophy work for children?
You've often said that Motley does not do original plays because there is a severe scarcity of original writing. But when you started acting you worked in original plays by Mahesh Elkunchwar, Dharamvir Bharti and you were surrounded by playwrights like Vijay Tendulkar, Badal Sircar, Girish Karnad...
