Mohammad Ali Baigis living up to his sobriquet of the global face of Hyderabad theatre. The revivalist is headed for London for a retrospective of his plays and for a premiere of his new play on September 29. The actor-writer-director talks about the relevance of grand spectacle in this age of instant gratification. Excerpts.
How do you feel about being part of the London retrospective?
To be invited to the pick of global venues is an acknowledgement of original writing on stage, a celebration of Indian-ness and its plurality. So is the London Retrospective, though it comes right in the middle of my curating the 10th edition of the Qadir Ali Baig Theatre Festival in Hyderabad.
Which are the plays that would be part of the retrospective?
Quli: Dilon ka Shahzaada that shall have its 25th show overseas and Spaces that will have its international premiere.
Can you share some of your experiences of the retrospective in Istanbul?
London will be my third overseas retrospective after Chicago and Istanbul. Turkey was an amazing experience. We got three standing ovations on three consecutive nights for our three plays. In the audience were theatre people from Turkey, Uzbekistan, Syria, Serbia and Armenia. While the Turkish-speaking audience could pick up the common Urdu-Persian words, the others were equally glued to their seats. The non-Turkish speaking audience came backstage to say that they could understand the whole play from our body language and the play’s structure that unfolded the story. This is the kind of theatre I was brought up in, theatre that is universal, timeless and transcending boundaries.
Your plays are massively mounted spectacles. What are the logistic difficulties when travelling with such a big production?
My first theatre spectacle Taramati, the Legend of an Artist was a great learning. I had a cast of 40 live musicians, chorus, dancers, three horses and two camels on stage. There were five performing areas and 150 lights. It had an unprecedented run of ten sold-out shows after its opening. When the National School of Drama’s Bharat Rang Mahotsav and META Festivals wanted it, I couldn’t ‘carry’ it to Delhi.
The next production Raat Phoolon Ki though invited by the World Performing Arts Festival in Lahore was possible because they could fly the whole team and props, and got the massive sets constructed locally. The play, however, couldn’t be carried to New York. That’s when I realized that I need to mount ‘travel-friendly’ productions. Hence, Quli: Dilon ka Shahzaada was conceived with ‘portability’ in mind, without compromising my epic visual imagery, and we could accept invitations of several international festivals overseas and in India.
What is your new play, Spaces , about?
Spaces is based on my wife, Noor Baig’s short story. Originally set in Chennai, with the old-Madras and new-Chennai conflict, she adapted it to the Hyderabadi milieu, after she moved to Hyderabad post our wedding last year. It’s about the changing values of society and what ‘home’ means to any of us globally. The play is as much about the metaphysical definition of home as it is about relationships, with its protagonist Aziza, a young artist living with her mother and old staff in her ancestral haveli, engaged to a non-artistic, Chicago-based IT professional.
What next?
Post the London retrospective and Delhi-Mumbai festival beat is our own Qadir Ali Baig Theatre Festival in Hyderabad with adaptations as this year’s theme. So, we have adaptations of Chekhov, Fosse, Tendulkar, Elkunchwar, Jose Rivera, Ismail Chunara.
In these days of smaller screens and shorter texts, what space does epic theatre have?
It’s simply what you like — a quick sandwich, a convenient dosa or a gourmet seven-course sit-down dinner? When a 1,000-rupee-ticket enclosure is as full as the 200-rupee gallery at my shows, the takeaway for the 1,500-strong audience must certainly be wholesome. It’s important that as an actor you connect with your audience, penetrate their thought process, hold them glued to their seats, dictate the movement of their eyeballs and control the batting of their eyelids in the one hour you are on stage…that’s when you do your job as an actor.
