Interview: Prejudice, patriarchy and poetry – adapting an American classic for the Indian stage

Theatre director Feroz Abbas Khan is no stranger to adaptation. In fact, much of his oeuvre is anchored in it. Most notably, the grand and celebrated Mughal-e-Azam: The Musical from 2016, is, after all, an adaptation of an adaptation. It was inspired by the film Mughal-e-Azam (1960), which in turn drew its ideas from Imtiaz Ali Taj’s play Anarkali (1922).

Khan’s quieter yet arguably more poignant Tumhari Amrita (1992) was based on AR Gurney’s Pulitzer-nominated Love Letters while Salesman Ramlal (1997) takes root in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

Khan is as much a consumer of art as he is a creator – he watches, reads, absorbs stories, and then gives them back to the world, refined and transformed.

This impulse comes through wonderfully in his newest play, Hind 1957. Inspired by August Wilson’s 1985 play Fences, the production reflects the director’s immense faith in the written word to shape narrative and emotion.

Tumhari Amrita, for instance, conveys an entire love story of 35 years only through letters exchanged between two characters. Letters of Suresh achieves similar emotional heft with letters between four characters.

In Hind 1957, it is poetry that forms the bridge between the past and present, between Wilson’s story and Khan’s imagined world. The narrative is punctuated with shayaris – reflective snippets of verse that breathe fresh life into Wilson’s text. They also accentuate a distinctively Indian...

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