This one’s for the children

The play Lungs, which premieres this Thursday, stars Prashant Prakash and Dilnaz Irani. Pics/Shadab Khan

"We read the text in 2015, and immediately wanted to bring it to life - not just because of how fun it is to enact, but also for its powerful topic," recalls theatre director Quasar Thakore Padamsee, when describing his upcoming play, Lungs. It stars Dilnaz Irani and Prashant Prakash, and is written by critically acclaimed British playwright Duncan Macmillan.

The story revolves around the conversation a couple has about having a baby in the middle of a climate and political crises-ridden world. After the man, in this fairly stable relationship, pops the question about bringing a child into their lives, we're taken on an emotional rollercoaster-ride of a conversation that is intense and intricate, while also being humorous. Their concern with social issues, such as overpopulation and increasing carbon footprint, has been symbolised in the play's title.

"We were actually hoping to stage this before the pandemic," says Thakore Padamsee, "We looked at other venues until the NCPA came on board to produce it. While they too hadn't heard of the play, the moment they read the script, they encouraged us to move forward with it. Even Prashant [Prakash], who was living in Goa then, said he'd move back to Mumbai for it."

Quasar Thakore Padamsee

Under Macmillan's spell, Thakore Padamsee took on one more of his plays, Every Brilliant Thing. This was in 2019 too. "I immediately went down a rabbit hole wanting to stage everything he had written," he says. "We toyed with the idea of screening it online [during the COVID-19 pandemic], but being in a room physically with actors - where we wrestle and fight with the text to make it come alive - is something else."

While there were extensive auditions for the roles, Thakore Padamsee says he always heard the woman's character speak in Irani's voice. "The more time we spent with the text, the richer it got. The actors injected their own energy and nuances into the characters. And with the climate crisis spoken about far more now, it's no longer an abstract thing. What we thought of the play in 2015 is very different from how we see it now."

Questions about having children have always been pertinent, but today, they particularly concern the inheritance of a damaged world. "It's a very intimate and private conversation between two people," says Prakash, who plays M, representing a man in every relationship. "The audience gets a voyeuristic fly-on-the-wall experience, where they get to listen in on the characters' entire timeline as individuals and as a couple. There's no stage direction or set instruction - the story unfurls during the conversation and traverses time and space. You could travel through months or years between two spoken lines. That was very interesting for me to convey."

For Irani, the play echoed multiple conversations she's had with her partner, friends and peers on the subject. "Even as characters - a man and a woman - they represent everyone in the audience because somewhere this discussion resonates with them," she says when describing her role as W, representing a woman in every relationship. Usually, we get into character for a play. But, at the very first rehearsal, Quasar told us there was no character sketch. He wanted us to fumble and make it into something we are. I found that interesting because we ended up giving so much of ourselves to it."

The current rendition of Lungs has been specifically designed for the JBT (Jamshed Bhabha Theatre) Stage Box at the NCPA, with both the actors and the audience seated on stage. "It's never been done like this before, and it's going to be staged in traverse, with the audience seated on opposite sides of the characters, who move about in the middle. The viewers get involved in the play as they get to interact with the characters while the story plays out," reveals Thakore Padamsee. "It's like watching a thread go back and forth in stitches between different places," adds Prakash, "The place might move, but the thread is what you have to keep following."

WHAT: Lungs
WHEN: June 16-19
WHERE: Jamshed Bhabha Theatre Stage, NCPA
TO BOOK: ncpamumbai.com