Savings Account

The play was not supposed to be directed by him. Mohit Takalkar was meant to direct it but he was busy shooting his film in Varanasi. Aasakta Kalamanch,which has produced the play,approached several other eminent Marathi directors but the logistics didn’t work out. “We finally had to take a call on whether the play will be done at all. My name came up and that’s how I ended up directing it,” he says. Vaiddya loved the script from the time playwright Sagar Deshmukh conceptualised it in the Writer’s Block workshop in 2011. “When you like a play,you always imagine how you would direct it. I had somewhere seen the play in my mind but never dreamt of directing it,” he says. Once into it,the journey of direction,he says,was fun.

Shillak,which means what remains after everything is done or savings,is the story of a lower middle-class family. They grapple with situations after the head of the family,Baba,is sacked from his job because he is not updated with technology. He lies to the family that he’s got another job but has not been paid. They’re worried about what they will do and also begin to notice changes in him.

“We look into the mind of this person who has been retrenched and the how it affects his family. The father shows schizophrenic behaviour,believing his own lie that there is another job. Psychologically frail,he almost chooses to become what is conventionally called a ‘mad person’,” says Vaiddya.

While the story is simple and the characters are common people,there are complexities and levels of surrealism. Vaiddya shares that he has taken care not to paint the family in a single tone. “Poor families are usually depicted as only being sad but that is not true. This family enjoys its moments of laughter,even during their turmoil,” he says.

Shillak will be staged at the Little Theatre Group auditorium on March 6 at 5.30 pm. For more details,visit: http://www.metawards.com