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Curtain Call: Finding my ‘voice’ to echo sentiments of a nation - Afghanistan
Khaled Hosseini’s book ‘The Kite Runner’ is already a phenomenon and I am sure that most of you must have read it. It is a powerful story of friendship, betrayal and redemption set mostly in Afghanistan
The week has been dominated by news from Afghanistan. Whatever is happening there, the images that are being made public are nothing short of heartbreaking. No wonder, most of the stories that are written about Afghanistan follow the same ethos, as the land has been witness to some conflict or the other since the past many decades. And the book ‘The Kite Runner’ is no exception.
Khaled Hosseini’s book is already a phenomenon and I am sure that most of you must have read it. It is a powerful story of friendship, betrayal and redemption set mostly in Afghanistan. I had read the book years ago when it was recently published. And I remember being blown away, not just with the story, but the way the story blended with the political theatre in Afghanistan.
We had travelled to Bengaluru for a play and the director of the play – Akarsh Khurana – bought a book at the book store to the theatre premises. It was a play based on ‘The Kite Runner’. I was immediately intrigued, as I did not know how the story would have translated on stage. I had seen the film which released in 2007, directed by Marc Forster, and that was one of the first screenplays I had read in my life. It was possible for the world of the book to be set up in the film, but I did not know how that could be set up on stage. Since we had a few hours before our show, I started reading it.
The script by Matthew Spangler was engaging and I finished reading it in one go. One thing I noticed was that the play had followed the pattern of the protagonist being the narrator of the story. And because of that, the protagonist had a sizeable chunk of the lines and most of them were monologues. Akarsh asked me how I found the play and I told him that it will take a really good director to do justice to this script.
A few months later I received a text from Akarsh telling me that he intended to direct the play and asked if I would like to play the protagonist – Amir. This made me extremely happy and afraid at the same time. Happy, because I had an opportunity to play the lead of one of the most coveted books of all time. And afraid because, I had read the script and I knew what a big responsibility it was!
Not to mention the fact that while I could speak and converse in English, this was a completely different ball-game.
I took my time to answer and it reached a level where Akarsh playfully threatened to end our friendship if I didn’t say yes. I knew that the rehearsals would be intense, in fact I wanted them to be so.
I also knew that I would have to relocate to Mumbai for a few months for the rehearsals and the shows.
I had just completed the shoot of my film and it had been a grueling few months and I would have liked to unwind, but I realised that this was too good an experience to pass up. I shifted to Mumbai and began rehearsing.
It all started at the basics. There are many English words that I had read before, even written sometimes. But, I had never used them while speaking. It was the first time I was pronouncing them and realised that I had been pronounced them wrongly in my head all this while. It was a 65-pager script and I was on stage all the time. My character had at least 30 to 35 pages of dialogue. Memorising it became another task.
While I have directed plays where actors had a lot of dialogue, this was a new experience!
Akarsh stressed on movements while we were memorising lines so that both – the movements and the dialogue – become a part of our muscle memory.
While that was going on, I was struggling to find the tone of the character. The journey of the character was from a 12-year old to the mid-20s to early 40s. And I was supposed to play all ages!
The play started with my character’s monologue, and that was about an extremely traumatic incident. Akarsh was telling me to not play it that way and to narrate it like I would to a bunch of friends at a bar. While I understood what he was saying, I wasn’t able to implement that and it was getting frustrating for me.
One day, I requested Akarsh for some one-on-one time. We spoke at length and while we were speaking casually, he asked me to start with my monologue. And just like that I had found the tone!
With that in hand, rehearsals resumed in full swing. And a few days later, our opening date was decided! More on that, next week..
Nipun Dharmadhikari is a storyteller and looks forward to telling them on stage, in front of the camera or in person.
