Prima donna of emotions: Lillete Dubey

Monica Arora

Lillete Dubey dons the quintessential ‘many feathers in her hat’ while being a playwright, director, actress, and, most importantly, a very sensitive and instinctive human being. On the eve of the staging of her latest play Salaam, Noni Appa, adapted from a story penned by actress-turned-author Twinkle Khanna from her latest bestseller The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, Lillete sounds busy yet extremely excited.

Speaking of her repertoire of theatre productions, the theatre artiste who has founded the Theatre Action Group or TAG in Delhi, Lillete says that she trusts her instincts when she chooses the stories she wants to direct or act in on the stage. As a reaction to the violence in society, perpetrated mostly by power-hungry men, she believes it is usually women and children, who are the silent bearers of this travesty, and as a result chose to direct Heather Raffo’s 9 Parts of Desire tracing the lives of nine women in war-torn Iraq.

She feels that heart-wrenching and real human relationships are the stories which touch the cockles of her heart and these are what she believes that, as an audience, one takes away during an immersive performance. The 2014 play Boiled Beans on Toast, which was penned by renowned playwright Girish Karnad and directed by Lillete, spanned the contemporary life of a modern family in Bangalore and their interpersonal relations.

She recalls having acted in and directed Tracy Letts August: Osage County, an acclaimed Pulitzer Prize winning play, centred around another dysfunctional family. Here Lillete was seen in the lead part of Violet, a matriarch struggling with a drug addiction condition. How the dark comedy traces the trials and tribulations of the Weston family is a lesson in real life itself. Siblings, spouses, friends, enemies, neighbours, lovers, acquaintances…her plays bring to the fore a myriad of human interactions in all their multi-dimensional hues and these, Lillete says, are what make them so endearing.

Under the banner of Primetime Theatre Company, Lillete has helmed the direction of scores of plays, the earliest of which included the 1991 Dance Like A Man, which has even been staged at Broadway and has the distinction of being the longest-running Indian play in English. The plot revolves around two Bharatanatyam dancers, well past their prime vis-à-vis their daughter, who is in the throes of youth and blossoming into an artiste herself. Here too, despite the seriousness of the subject, the mood of expression was gently laced with humour as Lillete strongly believes in not preaching sermons through her productions. All she aspires for is the audience’s connect to the subject and that is easily accomplished by striking a candid camaraderie through life like characters.

Whilst having adapted acclaimed foreign or international tales that form the subjects of her plays, she nurtures a strong propensity towards bringing Indian stories to the fore with a global resonance. “I wanted to do my kind of theatre and showcase indigenous work to my audience. My aim is to bring Indian English writing in the spotlight,” she says. And in 2016 she chose the story of obscure thumri singer Gauhar Jaan, who had the guts to make it big despite the odds, as she was way ahead of her times. 

The next few weeks will find her touring the length and breadth of the country with Salaam, Noni Appa, a charming and quaint tale of two Sindhi sisters — Noni Appa, a wizened widow in Mumbai, and her sister Binnie, siblings by birth yet opposites in life and attitude. The plot takes an interesting turn when Appa meets Anandji and starts developing feelings for him and how the story progresses thereon. Boasting of a stellar star cast featuring Darshan Jariwala, Jayati Bhatia, Meher Dar and Rishi Khurana, the play may be slightly subtle and more nuanced than her earlier productions, yet it promises to bring together a menagerie of rich human emotions, which is the USP of this charming and heart-warming story.

Lillete recounts that she chanced upon the book, The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, at the Crossword bookstore, and instantly fell in love with this story. A phone call with Twinkle Khanna set the process in motion and after a few creative tweaks in consonance with Khanna, the story was magically transformed into this play. On a more personal note, she adds that perhaps having lost her husband in 2015 also lent some iota to her choosing this particular story of love and longing for her play. 

Salaam, Noni Appa is ready to be staged in several cities, including Delhi, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Kolkata and many more.