Indian-American singer, playwright and director Isheeta Ganguly is all set to stage an off-Broadway show of her much-feted play Shakuntala Awaits in New York on May 1. A modern-day adaptation of the Shakuntala-Dushyant story from The Mahabharata, the play delves into themes of love, distance, the struggles of modern relationships, and the exploration of personal identity in a rapidly changing world. A t2 chat with Isheeta who was born in Calcutta, frequently visits the city and considers it to be “in the DNA” of everything she does.
What can you tell us about the May 1 show of your play Shakuntala Awaits in New York?
We are having an off-Broadway showing at the Aicon Gallery, jointly presented by Columbia University and Aicon. This is a follow-up to an off-Broadway run that we did of Shakuntala Awaits. During the pandemic, we did a digital run with two incredibly esteemed actors — Purva Bedi and Samrat Chakrabarti. The off-Broadway run was critically acclaimed. Since then, I have been thinking about bringing the play back to New York, and then I want to take it to India. In these turbulent times, we will be starting the evening reciting ‘Where the mind is without fear’ which I just collaborated on with Tarun Tahiliani for Art Mumbai.
The reason I haven’t done so many Shakuntala Awaits shows in India is that both the lead parts demand Indian-American actors. I have auditioned some lovely actors but because the story deals with the Indian-American diaspora, the challenges of the immigrant story and the different shades of socio-economic differences in the immigrant story in America, I haven’t been able to zoom in on actors that will fit these parts. I did have a chat with Jim Sarbh and he told me to keep him in mind if and when I do it in India. I do feel that he comes closest to the part of Dushyant in the Indian context.
What was the origin of Shakuntala Awaits?
When I used to visit from America as a child, my grandmother would tell me Shakuntala’s story at bedtime. As a child, I was taken in by the notion and the drama of the story. There are so many shades to it — love, abandonment, disappointment and then a happy ending. I was intrigued by the narrative of this woman who goes through so much turbulence in life.
What made you want to adapt it?
Years later, when I revisited the story, I felt it could be beautifully adapted in the modern context, in the sense of a woman who meets a stranger, they fall in love but before she knows it, she is about to become a single mother. What does it mean for a woman — economically empowered, educationally empowered — to become a single mother in 2025? Is she able to take on that journey just because we are supposed to be a more evolved society? Is our society still ready for single mothers to emerge among even our strata, where we are assuming that because we are educated, we are cognitively or intellectually open to it? Is it easy for a woman today to say she is having a child out of wedlock? These were questions that struck me.
Also, this notion in the original story of Dushyant not remembering Shakuntala when she doesn’t have the ring and when she gets it, he suddenly remembers her... I was interested in exploring the feministic implication of this sort of convenient memory loss. In the modern-day adaptation, we have a woman, a doctor, who goes into a bookstore in Bombay and she meets a guy who is a professor from Columbia University and is visiting IIT. She is from Queens, a ghetto kind of a neighbourhood, and her family has worked hard to educate her. She becomes a doctor but rebels to come and work in a low-income hospital in Bombay. She meets the professor in Bombay. One thing leads to another, chemistry is built and they end up having a passionate tryst. He has to catch a flight that same night and they agree it was a one-night stand but the feelings are obviously much stronger.
Once back in New York, they are in touch for a bit but then he ghosts her. Much against her ego, she lands up at his workplace but he can’t recognise her. That is because, in the meantime, he has had a degenerative neurological condition where you forget new faces. He has trouble remembering faces that he met four-five months ago. So then, the story is about whether they put the pieces back together or not. Ultimately, Shakuntala decides that her journey was to realise that she can have the baby on her own. She doesn’t need a Dushyant to make her fairy tale complete. That is basically how the play flows in terms of its adaptation from the original.
How does one take a story like this and make it relevant and yet keep it rooted to the original?
I didn’t want to, in any way, diminish how influential Shakuntala as a story has been in shaping Indian art and literature by itself and in terms of its many adaptations and reinterpretations. What struck me as very interesting was that so much has changed across times for women, yet on certain fronts, so little really has. A story about a single mother in The Mahabharata has as much relevance today. But the powerful aspect of the story, which really resonates with me, is how Shakuntala transforms disappointment into agency.
But then I see women around me who are single mothers and it is still a societally complex situation. There is a self-consciousness that women go through, a feeling of isolation at having to show up to things alone without a significant other and then the judgment that society that thrusts on them. The blame is always on the woman and that narrative, in a lot of ways, has not changed.
What does doing this show on such a platform mean for your career?
This has been very exciting because the Broadway world made me realise that I have a trilogy of plays that have now become successful on stage. I have an offer to publish all three plays and I think I am going to take that up. The joy audiences around the world experience in the retelling of classic stories into contemporary feminist rhetoric has enabled these stories to reach much wider audiences. That, for me, is the exciting part.
We have a largely American audience coming on May 1. The excitement for me lies in being able to take these stories to new audiences in a contemporary format, which people can connect to, and which can make them realise that the age-old stories still have profound nuggets of wisdom and relevance for today’s audiences.
Shakuntala in Shakuntala Awaits or Kadambari Devi the ghost in Three Women or Chitra in Sundays with Chitra and Chaitali, show that it doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman. The reality is that each of us, in our human story, are in the process of aspiring — in our careers, in love, for family — and there are obstacles that each of us face on that journey, and we ultimately figure out how to overcome them.
The most rewarding part for me, because all three plays are women-centric narratives, is when men come up to me and say that they loved it. That makes me feel that my work is crossing borders and reaching men and women across nationalities and cultural contexts.
I am also working with an artist from Calcutta for a graphic novel adaptation of the play, even while keeping the text intact. There is a lot of interest in graphic novels these days and I am making it visual.
Calcutta remains at the heart of each of the stories. Even though I didn’t live in Calcutta, me being born there and going back to visit frequently and my grandparents, telling me all these tales, is a huge influence. Calcutta is in the DNA of everything I do.
What is the status of the film that you were going to make on Kadambari?
Currently, we have producers both in India and Los Angeles who are interested in the project. I am going back and forth in my mind about whether I see it as an Indian film or do I see the possibility of it becoming a crossover work. We are in discussions in Bombay, we have been in discussions with Dharma (Productions) and I certainly want to take it to YRF (Yash Raj Films), where it all originated in the first place. In LA, we are talking to a couple of independent producers. I am working with an Indian-American writer named Isha Damle on the project. I am eventually hopeful that YRF will do it. It would be a great role for Rani Mukerji to do. I also want to direct my own film which I think I will with Shakuntala Awaits. I would love to make it into a Bengali film.