‘Personal & precious’

Vikram Phukan is new director on the block.

Prepping time Actors Rushab Kamdar and Gandharv Dewan in‘Those Left Behind Things’.

Paper boats and aeroplanes lie strewn on the seats of Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai, setting the theme of the evening’s play Those Left Behind Things. Written and directed by Vikram Phukan, white-collar worker-turned-theatre enthusiast, the play follows the travails of two gay asylum seekers from Iran, who leave their homeland to flee to what they think is a more liberal country, by whatever mode of travel they can use.

Moved by a real-life refugee’s desperate means to obtain asylum, Phukan wrote the play to depict the dilemmas, struggles and resilience of migrants braving it out in a strange, new world.

Excerpts from an interview:

What made you want to direct a play?

I think the impulse was prompted more by the subject matter and wanting to represent it on stage authentically. Those Left Behind Things felt personal and precious.

What inspired you to write ‘Those Left Behind Things’?

When I was in Nottingham, in 2004, I had seen an Iranian Kurdish refugee threatening to set himself on fire after stitching up his eyes, ears and mouth. That incident stayed with me, and I wrote a five-minute play about it for The National Theatre of Scotland. I expanded it to Those Left Behind Things.

From writing about plays to writing plays, how did that happen?

The two things happened almost concurrently. After working in England for around seven years, in functional business consultancy, I returned to India, in 2008, to pursue a career as a writer. Even though I was an avid theatre buff in the UK, getting into theatre criticism took place purely by chance. In 2010, I started the theatre website, Stage Impressions, and around the same time wrote some of the episodes for Sunil Shanbag’s play Stories in A Song.

These included Hindustani Airs, in which an English woman attempts to musically notate an Indian melody sung by an Indian courtesan; Whose Song Is It AnyWay; The Bengalee Babu; and My name is Gauhar Jaan etc.

You have an uninhibited love- scene on stage, aesthetically done. How did you decide how graphic that would be?

I didn’t want the scene to be needlessly provocative. It is meant to be tender and unaffected. At the same time, I did not want to sanitise the scene because it is a same-sex interaction. Luckily, I had actors who were comfortable in their own skin and understood this, and were able to strike the right balance.

One of your characters, Hamid, says all his strength comes from his mother.Yet he chooses to run away from her and Iran…

Some choices are forced upon you by circumstances. Hamid can never replicate his life in Tehran in his new country; but the repressed confines in which he was growing up in Iran were stifling. Running away in itself isn’t cowardice. It shows you are willing to assume responsibility for your own life on your terms.

You are a faculty member of the Drama School in Mumbai. What do you teach?

I teach a ‘Theatre Appreciation and Context’ module that introduces students to different genres of theatre. We read scripts and do improvisation exercises. We also watch and discuss one theatre production a month.

What do you enjoy most — reviewing theatre, writing plays, teaching drama or directing your own play?

All these activities have their own pay-offs. But directing is fresh on my psyche, and the challenges it presents combines both — the thinking that goes into writing a play and the interactiveness of a classroom. So, my vote would go for that.