Piecing together a jigsaw puzzle in Bharat Dabholkar’s new play

In the theatre world, Bharat Dabholkar is best known as the man behind the ‘Bottoms Up’ series and ‘Blame It On Yashraj’. Both were large in scale, funny and had multiple runs. They used Hinglish, a spontaneous mix of Hindi and English, which the audiences quickly related to.

Dabholkar is out with a new play, ‘Jigsaw’, but instead of relying on his knack for comedy, he has come up with a psychological thriller. This is the first time he has approached the genre, and besides directing it, he is also playing one of the two characters. Damini Chopra is the female lead. “She will do all the acting, I am just appearing as a showpiece,” jokes the director. Produced by Ashvin Gidwani’s AGP World, ‘Jigsaw’ premiered at Mumbai’s Experimental Theatre recently. Both shows went packed. Over the next few months, there are plans to take the play to different regions, including North India and even Dubai.

Dabholkar says the initial idea was to do a play on a smaller scale. He explains, “I have directed 35 plays, most of which are comedies. In comedies, people look for extravaganzas with a large cast and special sets and dancing. For the economics to work, we need larger venues and a crew which travels.”

His choice was to do a simple comedy without the frills, or choose a different subject altogether. He says, “Ashvin gave me a brief idea, and I thought it could be converted into something similar to a page-turner. It starts off as a casual conversation between two strangers, but things gradually take an upsetting turn when buried truths begin to surface.”

Dabholkar feels this play can easily be taken everywhere. He elaborates, “We are only two people in the cast, and I am directing. We are using a simple set. So, we are looking at venues with a capacity of 300 or 350. Besides bigger cities, we can take it to smaller ones like Chandigarh, Jaipur and Lucknow without much logistics to bother about.”

He says though the basic script is in English, he may tweak the language to Hinglish and add new situations in different cities. He says, “In North India, I could use more Hindi. I’ve done that in ‘Bottoms Up’ or ‘…Yashraj’ too. If I made a reference to the Thackeray or Pawar families in Mumbai, I talked about Rahul Gandhi in the North. Mumbai’s rain got changed to Delhi’s smog.”

He attributes his Hinglish-writing talents to his advertising days. He recalls, “I studied in a Marathi medium school. I would speak broken English. When I joined advertising, I learnt at DaCunha Associates that campaigns are most effective if they speak the language of the people.”

Those days, many advertising people were into theatre. Dabholkar says, “There were Alyque Padamsee, Roger Pereira, Sylvester DaCunha, others. Theatre was like a lab where we conducted experiments that were used when preparing ad campaigns. Mixing Hindi and English was one such thing.” This fusion of languages also owed it to the fact that many actors he worked with were more comfortable with Hindi, Marathi or Gujarati. “If they didn’t remember their English lines, they would break into Hindi. All this contributed to the Hinglish trend,” he says.

Comedy and Hinglish became his specialities, but Dabholkar did the occasional serious play too, such as ‘Just Another Rape’, an English adaptation of Jaywant Dalvi’s book ‘Purush’, and ‘Nathuram Godse Ko Marna Hoga’, loosely inspired by the Marathi play ‘Me Nathuram Godse Boltoy’. “Overall, I discovered that thrillers are more in demand than plays about social issues. So here we go,” he says.

Damini, the female lead of ‘Jigsaw’, has appeared in the movie ‘Saaho’ and web series ‘Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein’, besides some theatre. Dabholkar adds, “She’s a Delhi girl. She wanted to work with me, but when Covid happened, she returned to Delhi. When I was looking for someone for ‘Jigsaw’, I approached her and it worked out.”

How does he balance advertising and theatre? Dabholkar replies, “I take theatre work as it comes and continue with my advertising projects. Advertising has always been my first love.” Does one need a jigsaw puzzle to decipher that?

— Kusnur writes on art & culture