An Inside Job: Interview with theatre director Adhaar Khurana

It has become a running gag. I feel my name has been stolen. I used to have a unique name and now every conversation starts with, ‘Your name is like the card. Nice’.

You studied forensic science. How did you end up making plays?

I come from a theatre family (His father Akash Khurana and brother Akarsh Khurana are award-winning theatre people of the group Akvarious Productions in Mumbai), so there was a sense of being around the world of the stage. I decided that I would like to get out and see other worlds. I was interested in forensic science and went to Ireland to study this. I graduated bang in the middle of the recession and couldn’t do my PhD as the funding had dried up. I came back home and was sitting around when my brother asked me to help out with theatre.

Your play, Internal Affairs, is opening a new theatre venture, the Zee Theatre Tour in Delhi. What do you think about the small screen supporting the stage?

It’s fantastic. Zee’s coming along will bring the audience to theatre, which has always suffered for being a less-commercial medium. We have had around 60 shows of this play in Mumbai and Bangalore in the last three years but now we can take it to other cities.

You have combined theatre and films before, for instance, in Some Times  in 2013.

Some Times was a cineplay. We shot it as a play rather than going the usual movie route, despite the use of close-ups. It was a play but people saw it on the screen.

Some Times was about Paramjit Singh Duggal who is caught in the crossfire of demands by his mother, father, boss and girlfriend and is helped along by some weed and whisky. Is Internal Affairs equally geared at the urban youngsters?

As a director, I make sure that the content is original and youth related. I didn’t want to go the route of the British classics as there is a distance between the audience and the play. Internal Affairs allows us to explore relationships and everyone will vibe with that.

How much of the story is autobiographical?

It’s a slice of life. The writers, Adir Bhat and his school friend Bobby Nagra, have used real-life experiences from my life and their lives in the gags. Bobby is an eccentric recluse who lives in the hills and has a quirky sense of humour. Adhir also has a sense of humour but he handles the generic stuff and puts a spin to it. The play is heart-warming and
relatable to everybody’s experiences about ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends.

How has the story been approached as a script?

The story was split into three chapters. The first is from the boy’s perspective, the second, from the girl’s and the third was tying up loose ends. For me, the good thing is that we hear the woman’s voice and it is as casual as a boy’s. It breaks the stereotype that a girl would have fallen in love with the boy. Instead, she says that, if by a certain age you haven’t found someone, you can settle for a partner who is not a rapist, serial killer or from Delhi.

How do you think the Delhi joke will go down with the audience in the Capital?
It’s cool. Delhi people will laugh at it.

How did you decide the cast?
I met the leads, Priyanshu Painyuli and Shriya Pilgaonkar at the Short and Sweet Theatre Festival, where they were playing a couple in a play. This is their first full-length play. To balance this, we have strong performers in Hussain Dala and Shika Talsania who are in and out and play around 10 characters. The most refreshing thing is that there were four actors, of who two play the same characters, and the others keep switching roles.