Inspiration
The 2019 Newberry honor award winning middle-grade age novel, The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani is a beautifully rendered narrative depicting the painful reality of the 1947 partition which separated India and Pakistan into two countries through the eyes of a 12-year old girl. Reading this story for the first time with my kids in 2018, what I kept coming back to was how theatrical the narrative was and how it was wonderfully suited to a stage adaptation. It was then, five years ago, that I began conversations with artistic director Adam Burke of the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte. I spoke to him about how this story would be a perfect match for their exciting programming, programming that values the intelligence of children, honoring complexity and lifting up marginalized voices. As a professor at Bucknell University in Lewisburg PA, I sought to research, workshop and direct this project as a stage adaptation in The Children’s Theatre of Charlotte’s 2022 – 2023 season, which would be both the 75 anniversary of the theatre as well as the 75th anniversary of the partition. In addition, I hoped the playwright on this project would be a former student of mine, emerging playwright Mukta Phatak, as her first fully produced professional play.
The mission statement on the CTC website shares how they seek to ‘Build community, spark curiosity and foster conversations.’ When I told my colleague Adam Burke about this piece he was terribly excited about the idea of this book being adapted for the stage. Not only was it a moving tale about children who survived a painful time in history, it was also a chance to support South Asian communities in Charlotte by telling stories that were specific to them.
Adam and I were interested in the journey, the creation and abandonment of home, the atmosphere of India with all its tastes and smells, the idea that home is an entity that can be both lost and recreated simultaneously through relationships, rituals, traditions. Together we approached the author of the novel Veera Hirandani who, although had already engaged in a film proposal, had not yet accepted a theater proposal for the adaptation of the novel. She was open to our collaboration and sold the CTC first rights. Adam asked that I would help create the piece by leading the creative team through a devised workshopping of the play (a process in which the whole creative team develops a show collaboratively. From actors to technicians, everyone is involved in the creative process ) over the next few years in an effort to develop the play script that we would then, if strong enough, bring to fruition within a future season at the theater. We set up our first workshop for summer of 2020.
When COVID took hold of the nation our workshop was canceled. Adam asked me to write a draft of the play myself without a devised process from which to craft the staged adaptation. I refused because, although I was very interested in the play, I knew I was not the right person to act as sole playwright. However, I did know who would be; my former student and equity actress Mukta Phatak. Phatak, when she was a student of mine, was a creative writing and theater double major with a strong background in music and a focus on poetry. I knew her skills would be the perfect combination to articulate this piece for us. Mukta has always been a remarkable poet and performer. Since graduating she has also become a professional equity actress who has performed consistently in children’s theater. Her background also included speaking and writing Hindi and Marathi fluently as well as training in classical hindustani singing technique. I knew that if given the opportunity, Mukta would create a gorgeous and moving script worthy of the original novel, CTC as well as the complicated history of the partition itself. Akin to the author of the novel Veera Hiranandani, Mukta also had family that, like 20 million other Indians in 1947, were profoundly affected by the partition forced upon them. I connected Adam to Mukta and began the next set of conversations about her writing the script for us.
Although Adam was concerned about taking on this extremely young untested playwright, after much discussion he agreed to give her a shot. Over the next year Mukta created draft after draft, with the generous help of her writing mentors and eventually Children’s Theatre resident dramaturg/children’s theater specialist Wendy Bable, to help her further develop a script that was both complex, exciting and representative of what children’s theater strives to be. In addition, Adam asked me to lead a devising workshop with Mukta that would allow her to craft her ideas more theatrically, his original interest in working with me on this project as I have a strong background in devised work and building new plays through devising. Mukta and I decided to go forward with this workshop and we cast professional South Asian and South Asian American actors from across the US to join us at the theater in Charlotte to explore the script, the story, the relationships between the characters and the ways in which we could most creatively express these discoveries onstage. In July of 2021, three actors, one tabla player, a set designer, the CTC dramaturg and one actor/dramaturg from Enacte Theatre in San Francisco (The incomparable Vinita Belani) joined us for a week-long devising workshop and presentation for the Children’s Theater of Charlotte.
It was an exceptionally exciting experience! Over the course of many days we found ourselves discovering the authentic Indian atmosphere of the play and illustrating it through music, movement and continued revisions to the poetry of the script. The tabla drum became the heartbeat of the performance and it became clear that that music needed to be threaded into the piece more deeply, as did song and spoken moments in Hindi and Urdu. In addition, working with the CTC set designer proved amazingly useful, especially since she also identified as a person of South Asian descent. Her cultural understandings, combined with the cultural short hand we were creating as an ensemble led to gorgeous discoveries about ritual, community, family and religion – both Muslim and Hindu. We discovered many ways in which we could most beautifully portray these rich cultures and identities onstage. It was not just a successful week, it was a week that was one of the most meaningful artistic experiences of my life. Mukta and I worked together to create not only the structure for the week’s exploration but also the form of the final presentation for the board and other theater leadership at CTC. The presentation, a small experimental microcosm of what the final play will be, was received tremendously well. Audience members shared that they were moved to laughter and tears, that they felt the story was authentic and culturally specific, yet universal at the same time. Audience members of color from all different backgrounds related feelings of recognition, of being seen, of a deep connection with the immigrant and refugee experience.
Mukta and I, in conversation with Adam and both dramaturgs (Wendy and Vinita in the early stages) continued conversations of what was successful and what needed more clarification in the script over the next few months. In September of 2021 Mukta completed a final draft of the script that was sent to the theater’s selection committee for final approval. It was officially accepted in mid-September 2021 for a slot in the 2022 – 2023 season.
Concept & Conceit
‘WE are home. We ARE home. We are HOME. Hum ghar mein hain. Ghar hum mein hain.’ Home is never lost when we understand that home is in one another. We are all of us here to walk each other home.
The main concept of this play is for our characters (and Nisha in particular) to discover that home is not a place but rather the people that inhibit the place itself. The great injustice of partition is that although there were rifts in the Hindu and Muslim communities of India, that never the less they were once one community. In the tearing of this one great community into two, everyone lost the one home they all shared together. The great joy of this story is that although the country was not saved from this great tearing, at least their family, through their courage and great love for one another, somehow found a way to be mended anew.
Toward that end the creative team painstakingly researched the time period, the location, the culture of the lost province of Sindh, the music, the costume and the people. We took time to read first hand accounts, find specific instruments and look for the perfect props to tell our story. At the same time, we were keenly aware that we did not want to be tied to museum style realism, we wanted to honor the history but also make clear the themes and ideas most relevant to our retelling. It was a very difficult task. It was a joy that so many members of our creative team identified as South Asian or South Asian American. Half the artists were in fact in India, which made finding times for production meetings challenging, yet it was worth it. The identities of the artists mattered and brought a kind of deep connection and intentionality to the work. Everyone, artistic team and cast alike, felt as if we were honoring our ancestors in some way with this production. The stakes were very high.
The set was designed and redesigned repeatedly in an effort to support the plot but also the devised and minimalistic nature of the form of storytelling we chose. Movable screens in Indian and Pakistani shapes were a conceit we settled on late after many revisions. But ultimately, the screens were worth all the time they took to imagine. The pace of the show, so important to children’s theatre, was perfectly upheld by the flexibility of the moving set pieces, all moved by the actors which felt like ownership of their own story. The palette of the screens offers shadow play to offer creative solutions to the violence and traumatic experiences in the text. The opening backdrop also emphasized the enormity of the moment in time and the impact on a nation divided. We were also lucky for a lighting design that allowed for the imagination of the children’s experiences to take shape in gorgeous detail. It was a beautiful piece.
Reflections
Everyone of South Asian descent working on the show (actors, playwright, director and designers) had a partition story in their immediate family lore. Our parents and grandparents all lived through it. Some of their family, friends and community did not. Everyone’s stories were different, but the tragedies and trauma were a common thread. So was hope. This deeply personal rehearsal process was exciting for all of us but also challenging, even painful at times. Ultimately it was incredibly rewarding in the end. Our challenges mainly rose from how to interpret the story, either with a deep commitment to the historical fact or a deep understanding of the audience we were presenting it for. A diverse but mostly Western audience in North Carolina, composed of mostly middle school age children, was not an easy sell. We had to offer our stories with compassion but also with authenticity and truth about the complexities of death and separation. Yet, we needed to be careful with our portrayal of both the Hindu and the Muslim characters in the play. We worked hard to offer all sides instead of leaning one way or the other. This was not something everyone working on the piece agreed with. As the director of the piece, and as a South Asian American artist, I understand intimately the danger of Islamophobia in the US and I worked hard to steer clear of anything that could be interpreted in that way, especially with children who may not understand the bigger picture as a whole. Yet for some South Asians working on the play, it felt like I was rewriting history. I also worked hard to underemphasize the classist nature of the society during the time period, which was also seen as inauthentic in some ways. But since in a 1 hour and 15 minute piece for children without the greater contextualization of both class and religion, a discussion of partition and the caste system as a whole was just not possible. The playwright and I made choices, choices that were upheld by the novel we were adapting the play from. All of these choices, and many more in the same vein, were points of contention and conflict that needed to be managed as we moved through the process.
Ultimately, my takeaways from this project were many. The show was a wonderful success within the Charlotte community, a celebration in particular for the South Asian community who grew exponentially in numbers over the three week run. Closing weekend in particular was a rare treat to see multiple large groups of South Asian families coming in together, all their children sitting together apart from their parents, eyes wide seeing South Asian actors on this stage where they had never seen any of them before. The deep excitement and connection was palpable. Representation matters. We also received many kind thanks from other immigrant families who mentioned deep feelings of connection to the text and story. Lastly, it was amazing to understand how many adults, even among our production team, had never even heard of partition. One of the largest mass migrations in human history and it was just not taught in the American education system at any level. Simply astonishing. Working at a Children’s theatre became an educational offering for more than just children in the end. I was inspired to continue doing work that elucidates the experiences of marginalized communities in the US as well as world communities as a whole.