For the love of Shaw

In the dimly lit auditorium, actor-director Naseeruddin Shah occupies the prime seat on the front row. A few rows higher, theatre veteran Satyadev Dubey is waking up from his catnap. The young actress Faezeh Jalali walks onto the stage and noticing her Naseer rattles off instructions, "Faezeh darling, don't worry about your costume for the rehearsal and don't stub your toe, learn your lines and don't bump into the furniture, don't knock down the set and don't fall off the stage. That's all I want." A dumbstruck Faezeh replies, "But I know my lines!" and that throws them into a fit of laughter. Then film actor Irfan Khan (of Maqbool/Namesake fame) walks in and Naseer commands that the rehearsal begin.

The characters of the Shavian play Arms And The Man -- Major Petkoff, Major Sergius, Bluntschli, Raina, Mrs Petkoff, Louka and Nicola -- have been with Naseer and Motley for several years. The silver-haired thespian remembers laughing through the play when the travelling theatre company Shakespeareana performed in his school. "Mr Kendall played Captain Bluntschli along with Shashi Sahab as Major Sergius. I didn't understand it but I laughed a lot when Nicola drops the bag," he recalls. Later, in college the play was part of his syllabus and Naseer 'devoured' the war satire as well as other Shavian plays. Eventually, he went on to work on several versions of Arms And The Man.

But how does one get Gen-Y interested in a play written 117 years ago? "By not simplifying things and by not patronising them. We're trying to get the content of the play across, whether to children or adults. I think children are pretty sharp. They understand things," says the director, who also plays the role of Major Petkoff in this production.u00a0

This time, Motley is also creating a bigger set for the play. The group respects the playwright too much to change the format of the play in any manner, but what they are going to do is have a small interactive scene with the audience before the play begins. "We'll talk to the children and tell them that this is a play about the war. We will befriend the audience so they don't get overwhelmed by what they think the play might be," explains Naseer.

He understands that a majority of his audience being kids might find it difficult to grasp the various layers of the play. "I want kids to remember that they saw a play with beautiful words. It's too much to expect them to understand the play. But if they get just the fact that it's a satire on war and that it makes a joke about the concept of heroism, that's good enough," he says, before the stage lights turn on and the rehearsal begins.

The actor recalls how lines from My Fair Lady helped him impress Dubeyji (Satyadev Dubey) -- "During the shooting of the film Nishant, for which Dubeyji wrote the screenplay and dialogues, he disliked me thoroughly because I was from NSD, (Ebrahim) Alkazi's student and I were paired opposite Smita (Patil). One day on the sets, Mohan Agashe started reading out the lines and I sat up because I'd memorised the play when I was in college. I caught Mohan saying the wrong dialogue and corrected him. When Dubeyji heard us, he said, "Hey, tum Shaw bhi jaante ho?" I said, "Haan." That's what inspired him to do Don Juan In Hell. Dubeyji is also responsible for my fascination with Shaw because he did Don Juan In Hell, Village Wooing, Arms And The Man, Androcles And The Lion and Dear Liar. The connection with Shaw has been intense."

In 1944, legendary actor Laurence Olivier played Major Sergius Saranoff in what is considered the most prestigious revival of the play in London. Marlon Brando's final stage appearance was also as Major Sergius in a 1953 production. Randeep Hooda essays the role of Major Sergius in Motley's Production.