Drama calling

A Mumbai-based director talks about socialism and a critique of capitalism through JB Priestley’s play, An Inspector Calls

British playwright, novelist, essayist and social commentator JB Priestley’s An Inspector Calls was first staged in Russia in 1945. This weekend, writer and stage director Abhyuday Tamhankar brings it to a theatre space and café in Versova. In this play, Tamhankar says he revisits how thinkers critiqued the hypocrisies of bourgeois English society, and hoped for the establishment of a fair life for all, through Priestley’s expression of socialism. The 37-year-old says, “As a writer, thinker, and thespian, I like to study and present works of philosophy and literature, especially from the Age of Enlightenment. Primarily, because that epoch represents an intellectual shift from a theological and dogmatic line of thought towards liberation, emancipation, and reason.”

Actor Beauty Hazarika who plays Sybil Birling, the matriarch in the upper middle class Birling family and a suspect in the suicide of Eva Smith, a working class woman, describes that playing the character with conviction will help her to bring Birling to life on stage within the space of a drawing room. She tells us, “This play, portraying class segregation, in another time and country, is no different from what we witness today; we can’t deny the economic and social segregation prevalent. And the crude revelation of this segregation is what I like about the play.” Hazarika expresses the need to stir the thinking patterns of viewers, specifically about topics that we are accustomed to, but shouldn’t be. Tamhankar continues, “I’d like the audience to walk away enlightened on these topics and with an optimism, positivity and a sense of hopefulness that society can continue its steady progression towards  enlightenment.” 

Beauty Hazarika and Abhyuday Tamhankar 

The Mumbai-based director adds that in order to ensure these takeaways are accessible and easy to follow, actors won’t be conforming to a British accent. “We’re neutralising the accent to present the substance of the text and its ideas in a comprehensive manner, so that the audience experiences something more natural and authentic from the actors and the place.”

The play is in three acts, each staged over one night set in 1912. While this one-hour-40-minute drawing room drama takes place on stage, the director tells us that they are faithful to the original script. Even the costumes, which were a collective effort by the team, are planned as closely to the style of the upper middle class society of the time. 

On April 23, 7.30 pm
At Creative Adda, Bungalow 191, near Blue Tokai Cafe, Versova. 
Log on to in.bookmyshow.com 
Cost Rs 250 onwards

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