Makarand Deshpande on his play Balatkar Please Stop It: 'It will serve as a litmus test for my audience'

Veteran thespian and playwright Makarand Deshpande is back with a contemporary play. Titled Balatkar Please Stop It, it is a satire on people celebrating 8 March as the International Women’s Day to empower women. The two-act Hindi play has been written and directed by Deshpande, who runs Ansh theatre group. He also acts in it. It is all set to premiere on Saturday, 14 May at Prithvi Theatre (Mumbai).

Amid rehearsals, we catch up with Makarand as he sheds light on conveying a dark and socially relevant message through live performance, the inherent humour that forms an inseparable part of stage plays and more. Excerpts:

Balatkar Please Stop It is based on women’s right to integrity. Did the idea to tell this story come from a personal space?

For me, my mother is ‘the woman’. My sisters are also a very important part of my life. I feel that the adage ‘behind every successful man, there is a woman’ holds very true. But the kind of abuse that women experience is in contradiction to everything we say about women empowerment. This male-dominated society is so difficult to navigate through.

What nudged you to pen a story like this?

I often think if ‘balatkar’ implies social degradation. I also wonder if people perpetrating such acts of violence have a different kind of mindset from the rest of us. These are the things I’ve been introspecting about. People talk, discuss and debate about rape which happens outside the confines of one’s home. But is there a punishment for gender-based violence that takes place within the four walls of our homes? I wanted to break the silence surrounding such instances through this play.

Tell us a little more about this human satire.

The play takes place in a theatre company that decides to do a play on the occasion of International Women’s Day wherein the actors don’t want to be a part of it because it revolves around the subject of balatkar. Some of them might have a history pertaining to it and so, they aren’t comfortable enacting the scenes out. I’m going through real cases and the actors’ personal lives. They end up coming face-to-face with those unsaid experiences they’ve had.

What made you believe that theatre is the perfect conduit to narrate this story?

It is the most expressive and live medium. Theatre is very interesting to me because the audience and the actors co-exist in the same unit of space and time. A story told through a play is more emotionally penetrative in nature.

The title is a perfect reflection of what the play is all about. Was there a thought behind christening it in the most obvious way?

We want to work in comedies and feel-good films and plays. We don’t want to be a part of stage plays themed on serious issues. Many might argue and say that solemn topics can be imparted through street theatre and documentaries. That’s what I’m addressing through this play. I’m putting something uncomfortable out there. That’s also the reason why I’ve retained ‘balatkar’ as the title rather than using any other euphemism to cheat the audience.

I’m telling them to prepare themselves mentally before coming to watch it. I don’t want to make it sensational; I just want to convey the truth through it – the truth that I know. I feel that the play will be ridiculously hilarious in parts and some scenes will make the audience go numb.

As a playwright, how do you plan on drawing the line between making the audience think and making them emotionally numb?

I’ll slowly help them journey from one point to the other so that they’re prepared when the issues we’re projecting in the play finally hit them. Somebody came down from Pune to narrate me the script of a film. I told him to come to my rehearsals. After watching them, he didn’t speak to me and immediately left for Pune. It was much later that he told me that he hasn’t been impacted by a piece of art so much in the last 30 years. The play continued to haunt him for days. It has made him think and feel, and that’s exactly what I aim to do. I’m taking the audience to a zone where they might feel numb but I don’t intend to make them uncomfortable.

How much do you let grey subjects affect you personally?

Unless the subject of a play has deeply affected me, I won’t be able to write. Writing is the most difficult aspect of creating art. While writing, you have to be extremely subjective, which means you will be disturbed because you’re also looking for ways to deal with things.

The play is laced with dark humour and will supposedly evoke laughter. Is humour a device that you have deliberately made use of to convey the theme?

Humour isn’t a tool that I’ve used; it is an element that is an inseparable aspect of theatre. In street theatre, we take social issues and perform them on the street. But in case of stage plays, we turn these issues into satires. A problem when printed on the newspaper is news, but a play revolving around that news becomes an interpretation of it, and that is often laced with humour. In plays, humour comes from hypocrisy and irresponsible behaviour and isn’t obvious or direct.

What makes Balatkar Please Stop It more challenging for you than your other plays?

I was performing during the pandemic, and the audience continued to come even then. But this time around, I’m actually intrigued whether they will come or not because of the title of the play. Balatkar Please Stop It will serve as a litmus test. This time around, I’m not sure if the audiences who come to watch my plays will come for this one. Keeping the title as it is a gamble that I’ve taken up.

Titas Chowdhury is a journalist based in Mumbai with a keen interest in films and beaches.

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