Date: 16th October 2001, By: Naseerudin Shah, Ratna Pathak & Heeba Shah
Ismat Chugtai, who in the opinion of many is India’s answer to George Bernard Shaw, is a mesmerizing storyteller. Her tales are visually beautiful, warm, deep and emotionally intricate.
Three stalwarts of Indian theatre – Naseeruddin Shah, Ratna Pathak Shah, Heeba Shah undertook a fantastic stage experiment in storytelling … weaving the stories of Ismat in their magical voices.
To just sit on the stage and tell these stories – not dramatize, not enact – just tell the stories to the audience – to bring to life the oldest form of theatre.
The magic of theatre is to bring alive in the imagination of the audience, the world you are talking about. The challenge lies in standing alone on stage, amidst a basic set and not only holding the attention of the audience but also creating imagery with your words, your actions and your expressions – thus communicating the power of story through yourself.
The evening under the auspices of Ludhiana Sanskritik Samagam, was dedicating to telling the story, from the point of view of a woman, of the upper middle class people from small towns, in our country of the 40s’ and 50s’. The basic idea was not only to breathe life into a traditional art form but also strike the right chord in the hearts of an audience, living in the same milieu.
