‘Barff’: Saurabh Shukla’s thrilling play draws inspiration from Kashmir
The play, which has been running for eight years now, is inspired by the landscapes and ghost villages of Kashmir and not necessarily its politics
Barff, a play written and directed by national award-winning actor Saurabh Shukla, is set in Kashmir—however, it is not connected with the politics of the region. The inspiration lies in the people and landscapes. During his travels in Srinagar, Shukla discovered something awe-inspiring in its locales. “I came across small villages with beautiful houses, but nobody lived there. I was told that during the insurgency, everyone had left— it was a ghost village. It lent an aura of mystery to the place, and it is for this reason that I set the play in Kashmir."
The sets are integral to the play, almost like characters in their own right. “Ashvin Gidwani, the producer, said it gets difficult to travel with a heavy set and so we decided to adapt the sets according to the place we were staging it," says Shukla.
In one of their productions in the US, for instance, they performed on a basketball court. “We played with haze and smoke as the play is set in a heavily snowing Kashmir. The basketball court was quite cold and chilly, and there was a natural ball of fog that lingered like a cloud—this was magical for us," he adds.
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Even though the play is not political, Shukla maintains that humans are never really free from the politics of the land, and that it is up to the audience to interpret it as per what they understand
Revolving around the story about a doctor held captive by parents desperate to find help for their ill child, Barff’s central theme explores the question of what constitutes ‘truth’. Shukla looks back at the day that the play opened in Mumbai, and a young woman came to him saying that she had left her family and had been living on her own. “After watching my play, she understood that her truth and her family’s truth can be different. With this realisation, she called up her family after 10 years of not being in contact with them," he elaborates.
It took seven years for Shukla to write the play, for which he took time out of his busy film schedule. “I was invited to stage a play at the National School of Drama’s annual theatre festival, Bharat Rang Mahotsav. I decided to stage Barff. The play demanded a visual language, so to bring it on stage was a challenge. I am very happy with its outcome," he says. The play has been running for eight years now and even though it has not undergone any technical changes, Shukla feels that his experiences became more nuanced over time.
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In his opinion, the very mediums of theatre and film have seen transitions over decades, since he began his career in the 1980s. “During the mid-1950s, 1960s and 1970s, we saw plays by Girish Karnad, Mohan Agashe, and more. But now, with a change in generations, plays and audiences have changed. Morality and etiquettes have changed." These days, people want to watch plays when an Indian film actor performs, and pay well to watch such a performance. “They often wait to take a selfie with actors at the end of the play, which I personally dislike; I want them to talk about the play and not me. But what is positive about this is that it is the first time they have watched a play, and that is good for theatre," he adds.
Most people find theatre a niche art form because it is considered a medium for the intellectual class. To this, Shukla says: “The first priority of theatre is entertainment, which is engagement. This should essentially be the focus," he says.
Barff will be staged at Prestige Centre for Performing Arts, Bengaluru, on 6 April at 7.30 pm.
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