Mumbai: Celebrated theatre auteur Feroz Abbas Khan, who is gearing up for the exhibition of his upcoming play ‘Letters of Suresh’ in India, has shared that his latest artwork will challenge the imagination of the audience.
He said that he spent many sleepless nights putting together the play and often wondered how it would turn out.
Feroz Abbas Khan’s oeuvre encompasses K. Asif’s flamboyance in ‘Mughal-e-Azam: The Musical’.
He has also helmed the spectacular and stunning, ‘Civilisation to Nation‘, the tragedy of Arthur Miller’s ‘Death of a Salesman’ (in ‘Salesman Ramlal’), ‘Gandhi, My Father’ and others.
For ‘Letters of Suresh’, he teamed up with Pulitzer nominee and Obie Award winning playwright Rajiv Joseph.
Explaining why he chose an intimate format after the larger-than-life splendour of his recent successes ‘Civilisation to Nation’ and ‘Mughal-e-Azam : The Musical’, Feroz Abbas Khan said: “Rajiv’s writing is poetic, poignant and haunting. He makes the complex, layered, and nuanced aspects of the human condition emotionally devastating. The words and actors are at the centre of this theatre experience. The imagination of the audience will be challenged. This has been the most overwhelming piece of work I have ever done. I have stayed awake for nights wondering how it will turn out.”
The play poignantly explores themes of love, loss, death, the search for peace and solace even amid acute existential loneliness.
The four characters in the story pen letters to each other and have little in common except the need for human connection.
Rajiv Joseph shared: “There was a time when so many of us wrote letters and snail-mailed them to friends and family. Letter-writing seems to be a lost art, and even though it wasn’t my intention to write a play solely with letters, they turned out to be the most interesting part and eventually took over the story.”
‘Letters of Suresh’, which has been earlier staged in the US, is set to premiere in India at the NMACC (Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre) in Mumbai from May 9 to 12.
–IANS