The largest problem in performing arts is to reimagine a basic with out alienating any part of the viewers or actors that drive the story. By liberating the spirit of Anarkali from the iron grip of Ok Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam, director Feroz Abbas Khan has achieved the inconceivable. As India’s first Broadway-style musical returns to Delhi this Valentine’s week to finish a triple century, Khan says he didn’t fall for the “company cliches of monetising a movie” however sought to “convey the story again to the stage it belonged with a contemporary sensibility.
“For me, Mughal-e-Azam’s genesis is in theatre,” avers the grasp storyteller.
Impressed by Imtiaz Ali Taj’s play Anarkali, Mughal-e-Azam tells the legend of the gorgeous courtesan who falls in love with Prince Salim solely to be chained by Akbar, the emperor-father. Khan says that Asif selected to see the story from Akbar’s viewpoint as a result of he needed to promote the thought to an enormous producer who might bankroll his magnum opus. “The route to seek out finance for artwork can result in tremendous inventive selections. It’s mentioned that producer Shapoorji Mistry was an awesome fan of the emperor and the Persian language. So, Asif sahab instructed him he would make a movie on Akbar. Therefore the title, however he discovered methods to provide Salim and Anarkali a voice.”
A scene from the Mughal-e-Azam the musical directed by Feroz Abbas Khan
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Khan has given it form to go well with the sensibilities of a brand new technology, which he feels, connects with the topic in a totally different approach. “Whereas the movie is masculine in its tenor, the play could be very female in its method. Be it Anarkali, Jodha, or Bahar, the feminine voice resonates as they don’t maintain themselves again. In the movie, Jodha is extra perfunctory; right here it’s arduous to overlook her half. She doesn’t plead, she talks to Akbar. That is why our feminine fan base is larger.”
Because the 1960 movie has turn into fodder for memes, one other problem for Khan was to show its declamatory fashion of performances right into a extra intimate one. “I carried out a two-week workshop to ‘de-Mughal-e-Azam-ise’ the actors to stop them from placing imitation of Prithviraj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar on stage.” Written within the type of Parsi theatre, Khan says, it was not straightforward to remove “the over-the-top-ness” however nonetheless retain the “depth and energy” of the spoken phrase. “Razzmatazz can not make a present final this lengthy until the actors and viewers should not connected to the story,” he muses.
For Khan, the play’s success reinforces his perception that should you give one thing of worth and high quality, individuals settle for it. “It solutions those that say the viewers has modified. The language shouldn’t be straightforward and the play is a bit languid for issues don’t explode from the beginning. Nonetheless, audiences have been capable of admire its magnificence and aesthetics.”
Director Feroz Abbas Khan
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Excerpts from an interview:
Have you ever observed any adjustments within the efficiency within the final eight years?
There was a dramatic shift within the present after we staged it after the pandemic as a result of the pathos and loneliness they confronted discovered a mirrored image within the efficiency. Whereas happiness is one thing he aspires for, grief makes a person. The actors skilled one thing that had by no means occurred earlier than. The sensitivity that emerged out of despair, loneliness, and insecurities opened them up emotionally and there’s a quantum leap within the expression. I guess COVID-19 grew to become a wound for them, and now the efficiency is a therapeutic course of.
Publish-COVID, we additionally see a change within the viewers’s engagement with leisure.
After COVID you possibly can hold the largest star in your pocket, however the world over the viewers is in search of dwell leisure. People can’t stay within the digital world for lengthy. After the system got here into our pocket, the ritual of going out for a dwell efficiency at an appointed time had waned, however it’s gathering traction once more.
Some discover it elitist…
I admit the tickets are costly, however artwork is extra about style than accessibility. It is inconceivable to get tickets for dwell reveals of Indian artists like Arijit Singh and Diljit Dosanjh when cinema halls should not discovering an viewers regardless of a drop in ticket costs and releasing previous movies. This January in Mumbai, Mughal-e-Azam’s 21 reveals went houseful with out a single commercial. The play doesn’t make large cash. It solely recovers its excessive value. A musical like this could have a everlasting deal with, however we hold transferring like a nomad due to the shortage of efficiency areas for grand Broadway-like productions.
Curiously, at a time, when Mughals and Nehru are sometimes disparaged in public, Mughal-e-Azam is drawing audiences. Isn’t it a cultural paradox?
India is extra nuanced than it appears. When audiences devour artwork and leisure they’re, by and huge, not communally and religiously minded. The Indian thoughts is fascinating. It can compartmentalise. I bear in mind the viewers swooning to Pakistani artists singing Padharo Mahre Des through the Aman Ki Aasha programmes held after the Gujarat riots and 26/11. At this time when Amjad Ali Khan performs, there are hardly any Muslims within the viewers.
Mughal-e-Azam is a success not as a result of Muslims are watching it. I mounted one other grand manufacturing, Civilisation to Nation for NMACC, with none tilt in the direction of a specific form of considering. Individuals from all political hues watched the present and congratulated us. Some cultures tolerate variety, we have a good time it. I am not denying what is occurring however we should always not deny this as nicely. If we do, we would turn into excessive in our conclusions.
After mounting spectacles, you might have returned to your frugal world of gradual communication and chairs with Letters Of Suresh.
I’m very uncomfortable with success. You can solely develop by doing what appears inconceivable so that you can do. If you bear in mind, earlier than Tumhari Amrita, I did a musical in Gujarati, the largest within the language at the moment. Letters Of Suresh is probably the most difficult play that I’ve executed for I struggled with easy methods to make a posh concept accessible. I spent one month with actors deciding whether or not I’d be capable of mount it. Then, there may be Hind 1957 centred round a Muslim household grappling with the post-Partition picture of the group. For me, it’s a return to a extra intimate house and I’m glad that the audiences have absorbed them.
(Mughal-e-Azam will probably be staged until February 23 at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium)
Kathak dancers of Mughal-e-Azam the musical
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Printed – February 14, 2025 07:24 pm IST
