Naseeruddin Shah talks about the past, present and future of his theatre group, Motley, which celebrates its 40 years this month
Deepali Singh (DNA; July 15, 2019)

Circa 1978. Naseeruddin Shah and Benjamin Gilani sat in a small coffee shop in Lucknow and decided to make plays that aroused their curiosity. On July 29, 1979, they opened their first play, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at the newly-inaugurated Prithvi Theatre in Juhu, although they didn’t have a name in mind for their group yet. Forty years and 42 productions hence, Motley continues to stage plays that resonate with them. They are now staging some of their most popular ones, including Manto Ismat Haazir Hain, Aurat Aurat Aurat, Dear Liar and Ismat Apa Ke Naam among others, and also doing a couple of readings at the Motleyana Festival to celebrate the milestone. We caught up with Naseer to tell us more…

The line in the 40 years celebration logo, ‘In Godot We Trust’, is quite apt for Motley. Who came up with it?
I did! It’s actually a meme that’s going around. Initially, there was something about the 40-year celebrations but I wanted this motto because if it hadn’t been for Waiting For Godot, Motley wouldn’t have existed. We owe Godot a great deal. We performed it for so many years. We will be reading portions from it for one of the shows and introducing all the actors who were in it — those who are still alive and around. Some who are not in India will be sending video messages. The people who played the boy are now all grown up, like Akarsh Khurana, Imaad (Shah, his son) and others. We will talk about the fun we had doing the play. I believe people should attempt drama they don’t necessarily understand. The process occurs only when you tackle the script.

Can you rewind to the early days of performing it?
There was no Motley name when we first performed it! Om (Puri) had a theatre group called Majma for which I had done several plays. We didn’t have a banner, so he said, ‘Do it for Majma’.

It wasn’t a particularly tough time. Ben chose Godot because he thought it would be a practical play to do, not because of its greatness. He said it’s just four men and we needed a child actor. He knew cinematographer Ishan Arya had a 10-year-old son called Sameer, so, we went ahead with it. The play was so difficult to comprehend and we didn’t know what the hell we were doing! Gradually, the references to Chaplin, circus, religion and all began to strike us. So, we tried to convey those as best as we could. I think it cost us around Rs 3000. We had to get one suit made, while the rest of us were in rags. We just produced our old clothes for that.

Please continue...
We didn’t expect it to make money but we did it because we wanted to do it and found more and more meaning to it. Then it began to get us revenue with full houses in Prithvi Theatre and other venues. And that’s how Motley established itself. I don’t remember it as being a very traumatic time. Tom (Alter) had a very large apartment in Juhu and we would often rehearse at his or Ben’s place. Sometimes, while working with Om, we have rehearsed on local trains, buses, at Juhu Beach, wherever we could find space. Looking back, even then it was great fun as we were doing what we loved.

Can you tell us about the influence theatre doyens Ebrahim Alkazi and Satyadev Dubey had on your works?
I spent my childhood in places like Ajmer, Aligarh, Meerut and Nainital. I studied at Aligarh University, where I met some inspiring teachers who introduced me to modern literature and encouraged my dreams. The plays we did there were shabby productions. There were hardly any resources or money. Then a teacher of mine took me to National School of Drama in Delhi and I was dazzled by the plays I saw! I didn’t know theatre like this happened in India but Alkazi was doing it. They were spectacular productions staged at the Red Fort and Talkatora Stadium, with a cast of 50-60 people. Every detail, right from the rings and shoes they wore, was looked after. That is what I have absorbed from him.

Then I saw Dubey’s plays. He often did works that Alkazi had done, but with no budgets at all. I consider his production of Hayavadana as one of the most memorable things I’ve seen on stage. There were Amrish Puri, Amol Palekar, Priya Tendulkar and Kalpana Lajmi among others. It was a spectacular play with nothing on stage but the actors. He and Alkazi detested each other and I can understand why now (laughs). I’ve learnt from both equally but I follow Dubey’s path. I want to do what he did — to reach out to an intimate audience, do plays that sock you in the gut, not ones which dazzle you. There are so many rudiments of staging I picked up from them. Alkazi was a genius at crowd scenes, while Dubey was great at handling actors and creating moments of dynamism on stage. The value of the word is what I learnt from Dubey most.

You rely a lot on the spoken word…
I love the spoken word. I believe it is the most important thing on stage. I admire well-spoken languages, whichever they may be. I’m not dismissing physical theatre. I admire it but unfortunately, I’m incapable of doing it. So, I stick to what I am good at — the spoken word.

What’s the one thing that’s been a constant for Motley in these 40 years?
To do the plays that we want to do. We once tried to do a crowd-pleaser — The Odd Couple. That was at a time when comedies were popular and we wanted to make some funds. All we did was lose money because nobody came to see it (laughs). So, we want to do the plays we feel the urge to do and that’s a rule we have followed. Sometimes we succeeded, sometimes we failed. Doing Julius Caesar was a dream I had since school. We attempted it, we failed. I think I was a little muddled in my head as to what kind of play it should be. It was part Alkazi, part Dubey. The mix didn’t work.

Is there a play on your wish list?
Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw that I will certainly do at some point. It needs 15 male actors, all of whom have extremely important parts. It’s a tough task to find 15 outstanding male actors who can speak well. I’m also yet to find an actress who can play Joan. I’m gradually accumulating the cast but I want to be certain how to do the play, so I haven’t launched into it.


The actor with Ratna Pathak Shah in Dear Liar


Akash Khurana and Benjamin Gilani in Waiting For Godot

Veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah, whose theatre group Motley completes four decades, on the two controversial Urdu writers he keeps revisiting on and off stage
Naseeruddin Shah (MUMBAI MIRROR; July 14, 2019)

The test of great writing is that it transcends the time it was written in. More than 400 years after his passing, much of Shakespeare is still relevant. Back home, we have Saadat Hasan Manto and Ismat Chughtai (to name only two). Take, for instance the chilling resonance of Manto’s “Siyah Hashiye” (Black Borders) and the briefest possible descriptions of horrific sights he saw during Partition, with today’s India. The condition of “the girls of the night” he wrote about is the same today as it was in the 1940s.

Ismat Chughtai, a completely different breed of writer from Manto, whose observations about same-sex relationships, dysfunctional marriages, incest, illegitimacy, left people aghast, belongs in the same pantheon. Her take on human relationships are acute and non-judgmental; she can write about a man in his 60s wedding a 16-year-old girl, then as he ages, of becoming envious of her youth and mistreating her… but she will still write with compassion even about such a person. Whether it’s a wife-beater, a pimp, a thief or a promiscuous woman who sleeps with everyone in town, they will all be described tongue-in-cheek, and with a wicked sense of humour.

I am from the same milieu as she was. Like her, I was born in a small, middle class town in Uttar Pradesh. She spent her life in Jodhpur, Aligarh, Lucknow and Delhi. I have spent my childhood in Ajmer, Aligarh, Nainital and Meerut. I have seen several people like the ones she writes about in my hometown. Her characters make me see many of my family members, whom I considered hateful, in a completely new light.

No one is completely black or completely white anyway. It’s astounding how many shades of grey Ismat Chughtai saw.

Her gossipy nature, which I witnessed first-hand while shooting for Junoon, in which she played a small part, probably helped her garner the insights into people that her writing contains aplenty. When I first met her, I had absolutely no idea of her stature, except that she was an Urdu writer. And frankly, I didn’t think much of Urdu writing — not having read any of it. I was brought up in an English school, thinking that Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw and William Wordsworth were the only writers. I hadn’t read Ghalib by then, so my introduction to Urdu poetry hadn’t begun. She would ask me about my family, and would laugh uproariously at the stories of my nana or mamu. She’d keep enquiring about my mother — would keep asking, “ammi ke baare mein batao”.

She considered herself a teller of stories — she said she would write the way she talks. She would say, “When I am writing, I imagine that I am talking to the listener”, and I find that quality endearing and eminently stageable.

After about two decades of work in English, our company Motley was becoming known as an “English theatre company”. I didn’t like the elitist connotations attributed to us, and I felt an urge to stage a play in my own language. I wanted to play an Indian character, and speak my language. As fate would have it, I encountered a book of Ismat’s short stories about six months after she passed away in 1991.

Walking into Danai, a wonderful (now defunct) bookstore in Khar, I stumbled upon Ismat’s short stories in English. Reading those, even in their poor translations, was mesmeric. I was bowled over by the magic of her storytelling and the tales. I then read them in Urdu and could not resist the urge to put them on the stage. That was the genesis of our production, Ismat Apa Ke Naam.

Invariably, each time I staged or read something by Ismat, the name Manto would keep cropping up. In fact, in Ismat’s autobiography, A Life in Words, she speaks about Manto with great affection. I then started reading his stories as well as things about him — the spells in mental institutions, the drinking problem, the obscenity trials, the disillusionment with Pakistan. The discovery of the hair-raising story “Titwal Ka Kutta”, written in 1948, after the skirmish between India and Pakistan in 1947…. it made me decide to attempt staging Manto as well.

Over time, I discovered his other writing, such as the heartbreaking “Toba Tek Singh” and the horrifying ‘Thanda Gosht’, and I began to really revise my opinion on Urdu literature.

I am immensely grateful to Ismat apa for having done that for me. Through her eyes, I began to see Manto.

My production of Manto’s Safed Jhuth Kali Shalwar, which was part essay, part storytelling proved a little too cerebral.

“Safed Jhuth” was, in fact, an essay he wrote, justifying why he wrote about prostitutes. He was tried for obscenity several times. Then I read a statement by Ismat about Manto, “He never visited prostitutes for sex. It’s not lechery that drove him. He wanted to meet these girls and understand them.” Apparently, he would spend long hours — after paying them — talking to them.

Having visited prostitutes as a student, and during my days of struggle in Mumbai, when I was lonely, there were times when I tried to get close to one of those girls, only to be roughly dismissed each time. Reading stories such as “Dus Rapaye” and “Hatak” somewhat opened up their world for me. In “Safed Jhuth”, he writes, “I am constantly being told to stop writing on prostitutes. I say, ‘stop prostitution, I will stop writing about them’.”

Unlike Ismat, however, many of Manto’s stories were poorly written (even though he had a tendency to show off his vocabulary). One can see they were often written only because he needed the money. I have been told by reliable sources that he used to frequent the offices of editors and would write something just to get money to buy his alcohol. But there’s enough that he’s written that more than justifies the poorer writing.

In fact, the poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz once said that Manto had the right to write what he did, but it did not qualify as literature. About Ismat, he thought otherwise. He, however, did criticise her for her lack of political stories. Faiz thought she should deal with larger causes, but she deals with the politics of relationships, which I find fascinating.

If I have to only perform and stage Ismat’s stories for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t run out of material. She exerts a magical charm over me, even though there’s a certain repetitiveness in her turns of phrases — her use of muhawras, such as “ek aankh na bhati thi” and “rote rote andhe ho gaye”… That’s because she wrote in such a great hurry that it didn’t bother her; she didn’t even consider herself to be a great literary. Ismat, apparently, never revised her stories. The conversations in her stories may not ring true at times, but they sound real because she keeps them brief. It’s the descriptions, and the magic of the story is always in the description, which is why, I decided not to adapt the stories or stage them as plays.

The reason I stick to these storytellings is because it has opened up a new avenue for me. Through their work I have realised what theatre is about — it’s not about staging magical shows, where you have forest fires and thunderstorms. To me, the magic of theatre is getting the story across — it’s the words that matter, eventually.

The Motley family: Jairaj Patil, Akash Khurana, Naseeruddin Shah and Benjamin Gilani with Ratna Pathak Shah. Pic/Shadab Khan

Four decades after Waiting for Godot's debut at Prithvi Theatre, Naseeruddin Shah and Benjamin Gilani's theatre group shows no signs of slowing down. As they get ready to revisit five of their plays at Prithvi next month, they revisit their first act
Ekta Mohta (MID-DAY; June 30, 2019)

Naseeruddin Shah, looking like Einstein, and Benjamin Gilani, now sporting a wig, are discussing cricket and women like 40 years haven't passed. In the hippie decade, the two became college buddies at FTII, Pune; then co-actors in Shyam Benegal's Junoon, 1978; and then co-founders of the theatre group, Motley, in quick scene-changes. Gilani, who had been part of The Shakespeare Society in St Stephen's College, recalls, "He asked me, 'How come you haven't done any theatre in Bombay in the last five years?' I said I can't afford it." So, they started with a play that was easy on the pocket: Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett.

Since then, Motley has done 44 productions, including The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (1990), Dear Liar (1994), Ismat Apa Ke Naam (2000) and The Father (2017). They celebrate 40 years next month, the party for which includes reviving five of their plays at Prithvi Theatre. Along their journey, the twosome also became a family, with producer Jairaj Patil, and actors Ratna Pathak Shah and Akash Khurana onboard. When we sit with them to trace their early days, they've just gone over the same questions and memories with another journalist. But Shah says, in theatre parlance, "Once more with feeling."


Julius Caesar

'What Was The Cheapest Classic We Could Do?'

In July 1979, when Motley's Waiting for Godot debuted at Prithvi Theatre, Shah played Didi and Gilani played Gogo, the two clowns. Khurana says, "That was the cheapest classic we could do. It had a huge budget by those standards: Rs 5,000. But, that was the only play that had one dirty tree, with a leaf sometimes, and tattered costumes. I did four shows as Didi, and I wore the same costume."

Naseeruddin Shah: I'm not the only one in the world who did not understand Waiting for Godot. I wrote an essay [in NSD, Delhi] that this play is absolute nonsense. The writer is making a fool of everybody. I got thoroughly blasted for writing such a thing. But, when we started working on it, and concentrated on the words and not worry so much about the meaning, it began to make sense. Like in any great poetry, it states things in a very simple, recognisable and brief way.

Benjamin Gilani: Didi and Gogo have been together for 50 years. When you think of 50 years, that play should have been as thick as the Bible. Prithvi Theatre was being built at that time. During the shooting of Junoon, I asked Jennifer Kendal Kapoor, "What are you going to do with this theatre?" She said, "I don't know. Take it. It's yours." Three sentences. So, we started off and Godot fell into place, by chance, not so much by design. When people actually came to see the play, we hadn't hit a goldmine, but we started doing short plays: Chekhov, Pinter, Genet, Mortimer. There was something as difficult as The Lesson [by Eugène Ionesco]; and on the other hand, we had Chekhov's The Bear.

Ratna Pathak Shah: But frankly, we were just blundering. We all learnt on the job. There was nobody to tell you how to do anything. We were all lucky that we at least got Satyadev Dubey, in terms of his ideas and not letting poverty get in the way of perfection. There were times when there was nobody backstage. Everyone was either onstage or in the light booth.

Shah: Nothing lonelier than the backstage of Godot.


The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial

'Naseer Wanted To Do Julius Caesar In Jeans And T-Shirts'

The group performed The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial by Herman Wouk and Julius Caesar by Shakespeare in 1990 and 1992 respectively. When asked about their favourite plays, Khurana says, "I think if you take a consensus from the older lot, you will find Godot and Caine emerging as winners." Julius Caesar was an important milestone as well, but for entirely different reasons.

Shah: I bought a copy of Caine Mutiny for Rs 5 on the pavement at Churchgate station. It was a tattered paperback, and it lay around with me for years, like the Einstein script [by Gabriel Emanuel], like A Walk in the Woods [by Lee Blessing]. One day, I picked it up and I was electrified.

Gilani: It involved a large number of people — at least by Motley's standards — 17 people. And, there were 70 people in Julius Caesar. The youngest was 4, the oldest was 74. There were three generations [of one family]. The logistics was the biggest challenge.

Pathak Shah: How many sandwiches do I order today? Starting from there to: how do you get everyone dressed backstage in Sophia Bhabha Hall, in Roman costumes with shields, swords and banners? Where do you store that stuff?

Gilani: Originally, Naseer wanted to do it in jeans and T-shirts. But, Julius Caesar was on the course of 13 schools, and they didn't want to see Brutus in jeans.

Shah: I was muddled as a director, I have to admit. I had [NSD director Ebrahim] Alkazi on my mind. Alkazi did these grand productions with 30 people carrying flaming torches onstage. Meanwhile, I got introduced to Dubey's method. And, I was torn between the two. It didn't really work, and I had edited the play, changed a few things, which appalled a lot of the teachers. One teacher said, "What about reference to context? If you have given Cassius's speech to Brutus, students will get confused." I said, "You've been teaching this play for one year and your students will get confused with one performance? What kind of a teacher are you?"


Waiting for Godot

'We Had No Message, No Political Agenda'

In the last two decades, Motley's focus has shifted to storytelling theatre, and also, plays in Hindustani. Starting with Ismat Apa Ke Naam (2000), they have interpreted the works of Ismat Chughtai and Manto extensively, and also opened up the platform for more roles for women.

Gilani: There were no Hindi plays. Even now there are very few. As Naseer had pointed out then, and I agree 100 per cent, if you're going to translate from one language to another, you need to know both languages like a grammarian.

Shah: The translator must be of the same level. How many times can you do Aadhe Adhure and Andha Yug, which are the only two worthwhile original plays in Hindi? Ghashiram Kotwal and Sakharam Binder are in Marathi. Tughlaq is in Kannada and so on. The plays we wanted to do happened to be in English. Then we started feeling limited. That's why I felt the need to perform in Hindustani. But, shortage of plays is still there.

Gilani: It's a matter of economics. Where does a writer earn money, unless you happen to be Chetan Bhagat? And, that's not really writing of any calibre, that's promotion.

Pathak Shah: The playwriting issue is a big one in our country. And now, with the invasion of your personal equipment with all kinds of information and entertainment, it's going to be very hard for live arts to stay around. [Regarding the lack of roles for women], it wasn't a deliberate attempt to keep women out. I was the only girl around, and I don't think I was much liked as an actress. And rightly so, because my skills in early Motley days were very, very basic. I have also grown since then, and fortunately, Dubey trusted me. He found plays for me. We were making do with whatever we had around us. And there were no other girls around. Maybe they got scared of me and ran away.

Shah: You can only cast in a play somebody you can trust with your life. You cannot take a chance of a person not turning up or not delivering the goods.

Gilani: That's one word that operates very strongly: 'trust'. If we didn't trust each other implicitly, we wouldn't have stuck around, and we're going back 45 years.

Shah: I think a strong reason for me [to start Motley] was to be able to spend time with people I enjoyed spending time with and produce something creative. Instead of sitting in a party or chatting, you're sharing creative juices with people you like. What greater joy can there be? And it's really because of friends that we continue, the encouragement and support we receive, the belief they had in our work, which initially was shabby and amateurish. Dubey used to say, "I do theatre for the 10-15 people I love. I don't give a damn about the rest." And, it's really true to a large extent. We had no message, no political agenda, no profound reason for doing theatre. We were not exploring or trying to understand the nature of theatre. We were content with what we knew. And, we had great fun.

Gilani: [I remember], in Godot, we had this young boy, who is a very famous cinematographer now, Sameer Arya. The boy comes twice, and in the second act, we have started and Sameer went off to sleep. And, Naseer and I are waiting. Somehow we managed to get the play together. After that, Sameer was holding on to his mother, thinking he's gonna get a mouthful from Naseer. Though I had directed the play, Naseer was the one who would give mouthfuls at the time. Naseer didn't say a word. Now, this guy (audience member) comes and says, "I particularly liked your second act's interpretation. You didn't bring the boy. It was a touch of genius."

Khurana: This other time, we were in Bengaluru, and in the middle of an intense scene, this lady in sari and perfume says, "Yeh car number kiski hai? It's been parked there. Bataiye, aisa hota hai? Sorry, but we have to stop this show." And the curtain came down. In five minutes, we resumed, and something very interesting happened. The next few lines, whatever we said, coincided in context with what had happened. So, she became a star in absentia. She became Godot in a sense. It brought the house down.

The Influence Of Satyadev Dubey
Akash Khurana says, "For me, he was a bridge for Motley. At that time, Dubey was in his Renaissance phase. He cast me in Abe Bewakoof, and he hated my performance, because he was supposed to cast Amrish Puri. I had my wardrobe [ready], part of my wedding stuff, so that was great for Dubey because impoverished theatre: costume ke saath aaya hai. I tried to sound like Puri sahab and screwed my vocal chords. And Chhabildas Hall, that's another legend: you could hear hawkers shouting, TVs blaring, windows open, fans creaking, and I'm in a three-piece. But Naseer liked what I did. Cut to a few years later, theatre, struggle, job, house-hunting, which is another trauma, and we were homeless. I had a kid, a suitcase and no place to go. He called us over and I lived with him for 11 months. What happened there was not just the sharan (shelter) I got, but an exclusive gurukul. You sleep, wake up, read and drink rum with Dubey. I was getting an oral history of Bombay's theatre. Talk about influences."