Ucchhad, a play that throws light on social prejudices in urban India, to be staged in Pune this weekend

The play, translated by noted actor/director Niranjan Pedanekar, portrays a meeting between two couples over the peaceful and civil resolution of a minor altercation between their sons. The meeting slowly but surely escalates into different shapes and sizes of violence, tearing apart the veils of civility, and exposing the conflict that lies at the heart of human coexistence.

Ucchhad is Rakhadi Studio’s latest theatre production and well-known director Anupam Barve said the adaptation sets the play in an urban India where the boundaries of social prejudices such as gender, class and caste are casually visible. “The play is full of subtle humour that plays on social rituals and the need to keep up appearances,” Barve told The Indian Express.

The play will be staged on November 12 and 13

Produced by Amey Gosavi, the play has actors Sayalee Phatak, Tanvi Kulkarni, Siddhesh Dhuri and Pedanekar.

According to Pedanekar, there is a real risk in changing cultural references from a play to local references while translating as it might hamper the meaning intended in the original play. For this very reason, the agency representing Reza did not allow translations changing the locale, names and cultural references from the original play. On the other hand, keeping the locale as per the original play (in this case, French) ran a real risk of Marathi audiences not appreciating the intended cultural nuances behind such references.

“So, I decided to give a shot at translating the play by allowing appropriate Marathi cultural and linguistic references, while faithfully preserving the dialogue structure in the original. To make my case stronger, I annotated the whole play with my intention behind each local cultural reference, making around 100 such footnotes. A look at such an annotated version allowed the agency to trust me in terms of my intention of preserving the original meaning, and I was given the rights to translate and stage the play,” he said.

With this translation, one might be able to spot the characters from the play in one’s friend circle, Facebook acquaintances, relatives and even within oneself. The need to be polite and politically correct is all around us and is often countered by the need to speak our minds and even be cynical. Pune is a perfect fit as a locale for the pedantic, polished, crass, holier-than-thou, smarter-than-thou cynical traits of these characters, quite close to the original French, said Pedanekar.

According to Barve, the play is akin to witnessing a fast-paced table tennis doubles match, except that the partners keep on changing and it is not necessarily two against two at all times. “Once the stakes get higher, the ‘mature’, ‘responsible’ adults themselves turn into carnivores, revealing their true inner selves,” he added.