Director's Note: DIVIDED BY

The cast and crew of DIVIDED BY with the play’s director

Divided By is my third original play. The first one, Not Equal To, was about class struggle and income inequality. The second one, Greater Than, was about gender inequality and sexual harassment. This one is about religion.

Divided By is set in Delhi. Religion looms large over India. It shapes both people’s everyday lives and the political landscape. Which is why, dealing with religion, even in a work of fiction, can be like walking into a snake pit. You could easily mishandle it and upset a lot of people who then unfriend you on Facebook, or worse, don’t come to see your show. But even when handled with care, the way religion is depicted in the play, can become a distraction from the story itself. I wanted to avoid that.

So, I decided to set the play in an imaginary India where sports have become religions. This freed me to depict the majority sport-faith - Cricket - and the minority sport-faith - Kabaddi - however I wanted to. Having done that, I could then boldly proceed to explore the nexus between religion and politics, the dynamic between majority and minority religions, and other juicy matters du jour, without worrying about being yelled at by irate patrons in the lobby after the show.

Writing a play set in an imaginary world was fun. Even more fun was writing it in Hindi. I grew up in and around Delhi and have done plenty of theater in Hindi. But this was my first attempt at writing a play in the language. I was very satisfied with the results. I hope you will like it too.

What was less fun, was the amount of work that went into this show. As it turns out, writing in two languages is almost twice the amount of work as writing a single script in English. And directing two casts is almost twice the amount of work as a single cast. Who'da thunk! I was lucky to have a terrific cast that put up with all the craziness of having rehearsals in two languages. I am grateful to them and to our Stage Manager - Michelle Singh - who will be calling the show in Hindi without a working knowledge of the language. Salaam!

Finally, I couldn’t have brought this play to stage without the help of my Co AD, Sindu Singh. Thank you.

Happy holidays!

– Basab Pradhan