In Godot We Trust,” is the cheeky tagline of Motleyana, the festival of plays to celebrate 40 years of the theatre group, that is led by Naseeruddin Shah. It is also apt, because when Shah and Benjamin Gilani, in Lucknow for the shoot of Shyam Benegal’s Junoon (in 1978) thought of producing plays, the first one they did was the Samuel Beckett classic Waiting For Godot, which for many years remained Motley’s signature production.
Both Naseeruddin and Benjamin had come out of the Film And Television Institute of India’s (Pune) acting course; Naseeruddin had also trained at the National School of Drama (NSD). But what was undoubtedly a catalyst in the formation of Motley and played a large role in its longevity, was Mumbai’s iconic Prithvi Theatre.
The theatre built by Shashi and Jennifer Kapoor, that opened in November 1978, made it possible for the masterpiece of Absurd Theatre to be performed at Prithvi on July 29, 1979. Back then, it was staged under the banner of Majma, the short-lived theatre group formed by Om Puri and other graduates of the NSD. Most of Majma actors soon found work in movies and television and that was the end of the group. A year or so later, Naseer and Benjamin’s group was named Motley.
Naseeruddin and one of the co-founders of Motley, Tom Alter, must be given a lot of credit for not abandoning their theatre roots when their film careers took off. Naseer was a leading light of the parallel cinema movement that rose in the ’70s, and also had enough mainstream cinema roles to keep his dates diary full, but he always did theatre, even if it meant that the actors often had to go to rehearse, wherever he was shooting.
His wife, Ratna Pathak Shah, also an NSD alumna, worked alongside him in Motley, and dazzled with her prodigious talent in plays like Dear Liar and Arms And The Man, co-directing Motley plays and later directing one of Motley’s best productions, A Walk In The Woods.
Perhaps because the Shahs were not dependent on theatre for work or money, and got audiences for almost everything they did, they could do whatever plays they wanted to, without bothering about what would work. Naseer has always been fond of George Bernard Shaw, and has done plays like Androcles And The Lion, Arms And The Man, By George and of course another Motley favourite Dear Liar by Jerome Kilty, in which he played Shaw with Ratna as the stage actress Mrs Patrick Campbell, the writer’s friend and muse. It was directed by Satyadev Dubey, whom the Shahs considered one of their gurus. (Theatre lore has it that Naseer and Ratna met when they were acting in Dubey’s production of Sambhog Se Sanyas Tak).
Naseer could choose to do plays like Eugene Ionesco’s, The Lesson, Edward Albee’s, Zoo Story and Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny Court Martial — none of them easy to stage. There were a couple of failures too, like Julius Caesar and The Odd Couple, but by and large, Naseer’s star power has got Motley’s plays good houses.
Till 2000, Motley did English plays and then attempted, with success, productions like Ismat Apa Ke Naam and Manto...Ismat Haazir Hain, based on the stories of Saadat Hasan Manto and Ismat Chugtai. The latter became a subject of a tribute to her work in the play Aurat Aurat Aurat in which several actresses played Chughtai at various ages. Stories by Premchand, Kamtaprasad and Krishan Chander also found their way into Motley’s repertoire. Actors like Seema and Manoj Pahwa, Kenny Desai, Sadiya Siddiqui, Neeraj Kabi, Anand Tiwari, Faisal Rashid, Trishla Patel, Ahana Kumra, Aseem Hattangady and many others acted in Motley’s plays.
His children Imaad, Heeba and Vivaan occasionally joined in, either to act in a Motley production or direct a play under the banner. The entire family also came together for a production of Stephen Leacock’s Riding Madly Off In All Directions.
Two years ago, Naseer decided to experiment with long runs of one production and did Florian Zeller’s The Father, and played the difficult role of a man suffering from memory loss. He performed the show at a stretch for 30 days; while other actors were double cast, Naseeruddin did every show, which must have been physically and emotionally draining. Then he repeated the feat at another venue and packed all shows. A year later, he did the same long run with another play by Zeller, The Truth, a lighter one this time, about two couples caught in a web of infidelity, lies and deceit.
The greatest achievement of Motley, the Shah family and those who have been associated with the group over 40 years and 42 productions, is consistency, a maintenance of a certain standard of quality even in simple productions and a constant attempt at experimenting with stories and genres. Audiences have grown too, and are open to watching plays that may be offbeat, so that Motley never needed to stoop to conquer.