Basab Pradhan on playing MAN

Mohan Rakesh wrote Adhe Adhure in 1969. The play’s subject - a middle-aged working woman’s quest for fulfillment - feels like it belongs in modern India. The plot and the style of the play too is very modern. But then Mohan Rakesh was one of the pioneers of the “Nai Kahani” literary movement in Hindi literature.

Adhe Adhure is one of the most performed plays in India. Of the many reasons why this is so, one of them is certainly that this is an “actors’ play”. Any of the five roles in the play is a gift to an actor. They are all complex and layered. These are deeply flawed human beings being portrayed on stage, but in a way that the audience can empathize with them.

I play five characters in the play - all men who are connected to Savitri, the protagonist, in some way - as husband, boss and so on. The play requires that they all be played by the same actor.

The five characters are very distinct. Director Tannistha Mukherjee and our design team (Aditi Honawar, Vaishnavi Sridhar and Nitya Kansal) have strived to make these characters look like different people. The challenge is to manage all this with just 2-3 minute transitions between characters. It is not easy! Many hours have already gone into designing costumes and makeup, with more to follow.

But design can take you only so far. The actor must bear the burden of etching these distinct characters using his voice, posture, gait and so on. While not forgetting that drawing these distinctions between characters is just the beginning. His primary job as an actor continues to be to represent these characters on stage, faithfully and empathetically. I hope I can do that.

And I hope you’ll come to see Adhe Adhure.

– Basab Pradhan