Mughal-E-Azam Director Feroz Abbas Khan says, ‘Theatre is an Art Form that Will Never Die’

After a hiatus of three years, director Feroz Abbas Khan will pull the curtains up once again as his most celebrated work Broadway-style musical Mughal-e-Azam returns to stage. An ode to 1960 K. Asif film was inspired by a play called Anarkali, written in Lahore in 1922 by dramatist Imtiaz Ali Taj, the live musical is scheduled to take place between October 21 and 30 at Bal Gandharva Rang Mandir, Bandra West, Mumbai.

In conversation with News18, Khan talks about the kind of love that he has received for the show, how he hasn’t changed anything and why he feels that theatre as an art form is going to grow tremendously in the coming years.

You are bringing Mughal-E-Azam back on stage and many shows are already houseful.

I am delighted that many of our shows are sold out. As a theatre director there is nothing more heartening to see than the audience coming in, watching and appreciating your show. Bringing back Mughal-E-Azam on stage this time around is even more special. It’s very interesting because this is the centenary year of the original play called Anarkali. Filmmaker K Asif would have turned 100 earlier this year. And if you take out two years of Covid, then Mughal-E-Azam the movie completes 60 years. And we are staging the show on the same day, as it premiered six years ago on October 21. I recently spoke to K Asif’s daughter and she is really happy with what we have done. She mentioned to me, ‘If my father was alive, he would have given you a big hug’. That was the most amazing feedback that I have received.

Have you introduced any new elements to show?

The feedback for all these years, good or bad has just been overwhelmingly and people have often said that they want to see this again. So, changing anything wouldn’t make sense. There is a change in the venue Earlier we used to be at NCPA and this time we are Bal Gandharva Rang Mandiir in Mumbai. So, changing the venue is also a huge challenge. What is very new is very interesting. The kind of performances actors are bringing to the show, is something quite special, because the COVID period has made these actors bottled up and they just want to come out and burst on stage. I have seen the rehearsals and it is really heartwarming because forget about being rusty, they have been far more risktakers and you have will see a different kind of energy. But of course, the play remains fundamentally the same, because that’s what you want to see here. But again, remember a stage show theatre play is the same, but it’s not the same show. Every night is a new night and that’s the beauty of theatre. 

You staged a musical Eva Mumbai Maa Chal Jaaye in the early 90s. How have things evolved over the years?

That’s a very good question. Back in the 90s,when I did the musical Eva Mumbai Maa Chal Jaaye, it was audacious on my part to attempt a live musical on Gujarati stage, with the kind of technical complexity and the scale at it which it was attempted. Just to give you an example, these theatres, they run multiple shows, so you get only one hour in between the show, in the sense that it when are you supposed to do the lighting sound, the set and everything, and then you get only half an hour to dismantle it. So, that was something so challenging that everybody thought that I lost my head. Which in a way was true, because what ended up happening was that I used to put up my sets in the morning, and then the light and sound, I used to put all of them in the morning and any theatre company that was performing before us, I told them, not to get their equipment and use our sounds and lights. The other challenge was there were also a limitation of the kind of ticket prices that I could charge, because actually, my cost was very high but there was certain capping in the ticket rates. I remember there are some theatres, which actually banned me because they felt that my ticket were really costly. But I wanted to do it because I thought that musical at the heart is who we are.

You also directed some interesting plays which weren’t really big on scale.

I’ve always looked at theatre the way that could be on a big scale. Even before my Gujrati musical, I had an English production called The Royal Hunt of the Sun. But after attempting Eva Mumbai Maa Chal Jaaye, I was exhausted with the kind of challenges that I was facing. And that’s when I decided to get into minimalism. I realised I couldn’t carry on like this because at that time we didn’t have theatres and rather they were multi-purpose auditoriums where we would have stage shows, marriage and even prayer meet for someone who has passed away. So, I realised that I was just banging my head against the wall. This doesn’t work. And so then I went into minimalism in many ways. And the result of that was Tumhari Amrita. After that I had Magatama Vs Gandhi or Salgirah and even Salesman Ramlal which have all been minimalistic in terms of all its technical elements.

You have been in the industry for more than three decades. There has been a constant debate that theatre is a dying art. What do you have to say about it.

Theatre is a 500-year-old art form. It is the mother of all the other platforms including television, cinema and now OTT. We still call screenplay which is a play for the screen, so we are still referencing to the beginnings. So, theatre is an art form that will never die. But it needs sacrifices from the people who want to do it. Somewhere according to me, for some people, this is an art form which is the meaning and purpose of their life. For others it is a livelihood. So there is a difference between the both. People give a lot to theatre and that is the reason it is alive. No matter wherever people go from theatre, they want to come back to this art form because there is something very pure and magical about it which you can’t get anywhere else. Most of the other mediums become transactional where you meet people, work and move on. In theatre you don’t move on, you move together. And today with all the changes that we have seen due to pandemic where everything is going digital, people are craving to see live performances. Human beings want to connect with other human beings and this art form is just going to grow exponentially.

Lastly, why do you think Mughal-E-Azam continues to be loved by the audiences?

The reason why Mughal-E-Azam continues to be watched and appreciated to date is that beneath all of its opulence, is a human story that is relatable at multiple levels. It is about the eternal conflict between progressive ideas, between the love for power and the power of love, between a father and a son, a wife and a husband and it is also about women who have to either comply with patriarchy or pay a price for defying it.

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