‘In theatre, audiences are involved participants’
Today, with abundant entertainment sources acting as viable options for entertainment, theatre often lurks at the bottom in the list of people’s preferences. Few names, however, still have the gravitas to get the ticket counters ringing. Of those names, a ‘Feroz Abbas Khan directorial’, is sure to get theatre buffs excited. The director of the iconic MughalE-Azam, was one of the few who achieved success in the initial years of his career. His play Saalgirah starring Anupam Kher and Kirron Kher, which was staged for the first time in 1993, coincidently had the real life couple play divorcees.
“Theatre gave me the comfort of make believe, to hide and express,” says Khan about his infatuation with the stage. While many remember Mughal-EAzam as his most successful rendition of a classic, the veteran director has also adapted the iconic AR Gurney play, Love Letters. Tumhari Amrita, as it was named, the
Urdu adaptation starred Shabana
Azmi and Farooq
Sheikh. Probably, what makes him successful is his knack of identifying stories with subjects and issues that continue to remain relevant irrespective of passing decades. “The audience has to identify with the issues and characters on stage, and so they need to have a deeper connection,” he says, when asked why his stories continue to connect with the audiences. “They are not just spectators but involved participants,” he explains.
Khan, who calls himself an average reader, says that stage adaptation of books and short stories don’t necessarily excite him. “A play is a very delicately constructed piece of work written in the exacting language of theatre,” he explains. “We have great playwrights in different languages and there is a huge body of existing work that can be performed for a riveting experience,” he concludes.