Lillete Dubey is like a breath of fresh air. Always full of energy, positivity, and an infectious smile. We met the actor-theatre director at a city hotel recently when she was here for the progressive, light-hearted and heart-warming play Salaam Noni Appa, adapted from Twinkle Khanna’s The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad. Dubey, a passionate thespian, predicts the theatre scene in India, what she loved about Salaam Noni Appa and more.
You are not new to Calcutta’s theatre circuit but you are coming back with Salaam Noni Appa after a long gap. How does it feel performing in Calcutta and how much do you think we have evolved as theatre viewers?
Calcutta has a long tradition of theatre. It’s a theatre-going city; it has developed a taste for theatre. So, it can only evolve upward. I feel a strange thing has happened post-Covid. During Covid, people saw so much stuff online, on the screen, on television, that when we came back after Covid, people were dying to see something human again in a live performance. People are coming back more than they did even before Covid. Live art, the performing arts, is very different from the screen. There’s a real connection when you perform on stage as a dancer, musician, actor… the whole magic is that exchange of energy that you have. There’s been a big surge in concerts, stand-up, and theatre.
Also, theatre anyway, has a niche audience. I think that the volume of theatre-going audience is increasing; it’s not decreasing. People keep saying theatre is dying, but let me assure you, it is nowhere near dying. It is very alive and very kicking because of the kind of experience it is. So, I don’t think Calcutta’s audience is waning. Or I don’t think the world’s audience is waning. However, I don’t know what it’s like in Calcutta, but Mumbai has a lot of theatre. It gives a lot of choices to people. In a day there’s at least 20 plays happening in the city in Gujarati, Marathi, Hindi, English and more.
You picked up Salaam Noni Appa from an anthology by Twinkle Khanna. What attracted you to the story?
We’re hitting almost 75 shows now. Salaam Noni Appa is part of Twinkle Khanna’s anthology titled The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad. I’m always looking for a new story. Sometimes, if I don’t find a play exciting, I start reading novels or short stories to get the material. Sometimes stories resonate with you, maybe because you’re at a certain point in your life. I think I read this story very soon after I lost my husband, about 10 years ago. So, maybe it resonated more with me.
It’s a story of two sisters who were widows, and not in a sad way. I understood these characters and what was happening in their lives. That, suddenly, at this age, they were alone. And then one of them discovers some kind of a relationship. She’s very scared of what society will say because he’s younger and he belongs to a different community. So, I found the story very interesting. You hardly see autumn romances. It’s inspiring because I think the bottom line is that life is full of infinite possibilities, if you are brave enough to take those. It had Twinkle’s typical tongue-in-cheek humour, and yet it was very warm, heart-warming, emotional, and funny. Adhir Bhat, who adapted it for the stage, did a lovely job. Twinkle is also very happy with it and the fact that we are still running it.
Any portion of the story that stood out for you?
There’s a lovely line where she says, ‘I was so silly to always be worried about what people would think of me; how they perceive me. I thought people respected me, and then how can I do something like this? But now I have realised that people who are with you till the end matter the most. Others whom you care about would be giving synthetic eulogies at my funeral.’ Many of us feel we are too old, or we feel what people will say. So, I think the play holds a lovely mirror up to that.
The story was written in 2016, almost a decade ago. Society has changed a lot since then. Do you think it is still relevant?
I think still today, if you heard of some lady who is almost 70, is suddenly getting involved with a guy who is 10 years younger than her and not even of your class or your background, there would be people who would think it very odd and would make comments. And then it depends on that lady. Does she care? Most of them do care. It still holds relevance. We have changed, but not much.
Lilette Dubey in Salaam Noni Appa staged at GD Birla Sabhagar
In the field of creative arts, we always feel like there’s a scope for improvement, and since you get to relive or reperform, did you make changes over the years?
Yeah, but in theatre you don’t change a script. You do all that work before with the drafts. An actor has to learn the line, make it his own and become that character. So, you cannot keep changing the lines. The only thing is, recently we translated it from English to Hindi. We did a few shows, and it was received well. It’s very different from the English one, not in terms of performance, but in terms of language. We kept slipping back to English, out of habit, and it made us struggle a bit. It’s back to English now.
A few of your plays have come back, including Autobiography. Tell us about that.
It was done in 1996. We had just opened it and it had lovely actors like Lovleen Misra, Vinod Nagpal and others. But I had to shift base to Mumbai because of my husband’s job, and so, the play got closed. All the actors of Autobiography were from Delhi, and I couldn’t take all of them. So I am pretty excited about Autobiography making a comeback with Mahesh Elkunchua, one of our finest playwrights. He’s a very mature, sophisticated, and really knows his craft. It’s already done 10 shows. It’s not linear; there are multiple truths — there’s a fictional version, there’s a real version, there’s your version, there’s my version.
Salaam Nooni Appa is having a transition — it came from a book to the stage and has now been adapted for the screen. How do you feel about that?
I know. Dimple (Kapadia) is playing my role, and Manav Kaul is also part of it. I always feel film and theatre support each other. The same content screening as play and film is very common abroad. It helps, actually. It’s not in conflict.
I hope it happens in India also, when you get to see three versions — book, stage and then the play.
Correct. And witness how different they are, and what someone else has interpreted.
Tell us about your upcoming screen projects.
The film business is slightly down now, and I’ve reached a certain age where there are not many roles for me, and frankly, I am not interested in doing every other role. I don’t only do Hindi films or OTT but I do independent films as well. For instance, I did a short film with a young Bengali director, Kaushik Ray, for which I got lots of awards. I played a Bengali, very sort of controlling mother to a boy who was gay, and was too scared to tell me he was gay.
Apart from this, I have shot for a film with Nawaz (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) a couple of years ago, which I hope comes out as it’s very important. There are a few more films in the pipeline. Among my major projects, Dabba Cartel, I enjoyed and loved the story of Songs of Paradise. It’s a story that needed to be told.