Genres like suspense and comedy are considered to be the ticket to success in films. But when both the genres are blended in a movie, it may become messy, if not executed well.
Similarly, on stage too, there haven’t been enough experiments that do justice to both these genres. But this evening, set yourself up for a suspense drama served with dollops of humour in Aaj Kal theatre group’s Gangadhar Hi Shaktiman Hai.
The plot is about two thieves, conmen who have stepped out to commit the biggest burglary of their lives and playing them are the writer-director duo Gaurav Barve and Rishi Manohar.
What stirs the plot of Gangadhar Hi Shaktiman Hai even more is that both Rishi and Gaurav had meticulously chalked out the play, including its outcome.
Says Gaurav, “We had discussed the entire plotline, how the story progresses and what would be the director’s and writer’s vision. We covered most of the hurdles that might occur in building up this play. Once that was clear and finalised, we worked separately.”
Usually, you start writing and then see where the story leads. In this case, the outcome was known to the duo and they set about achieving it. How did this approach work?
“Rishi and I have followed this approach previously too. Gangadhar Hi Shaktiman Hai demanded that we know how the story ends beforehand,” says Gaurav. Rishi adds, “Suspense entailed that we had a definite start, middle and end. The suspense element has to be revealed at the end and so we couldn’t approach this story in a linear fashion. We had to fix things beforehand and then Gaurav worked on the textual language, whereas I worked on the visual language. This is how we built the play.”
It was the writer’s responsibility to come up with strong humorous content and the director had to show suspense. “To get the comedy flavour right, we watched Priyadarshan’s movies like Hera Pheri and Malamaal Weekly and then some works of Rajkumar Hirani too. They work around intelligent humour. We were clear that we didn’t want body humour in Gangadhar Hi Shaktiman Hai. We also looked at plays from the past to see how humour was devised,” says Gaurav, adding, “It was Rishi’s responsibility to see that humour in the text would be translated to a next level visually, on stage.”
The films that they watched had cinematic climax, and adapting something similar for stage would have been unrealistic. “The humour and suspense points in the play are realistic. Nothing would seem out of place. The challenge was to balance the two genres. When you are working in the suspense genre, the task is to keep the audience engrossed and serious about the proceedings. In comedy, it’s exactly the opposite. We had to create a different humour for the audience and then get them to switch moods instantly. Apart from that, we have tried out the set that also speaks a visual language. It might seem flat or a boxed set, but it moves horizontally,” points out Rishi.
ST READER SERVICE
Aaj Kal’s Hindi play Gangadhar Hi Shaktiman Hai will be staged on November 2, 9.30 pm at Balgandharva Rangmandir. Tickets available at venue and on ticketees.com
