Interview: Nadir Khan of ANAND EXPRESS

One of the prominent names in Indian theatre, Nadir Khan has been actively involved with the theatre since 1998 as director, actor, producer, sound and light technician and stage manager. He is the co-founder of Q Theatre Productions and a partner in The Industrial Theatre Co. Nadir is also involved with radio drama in the UK and has, so far, line-produced and acted in a number of productions with BBC Radio 3 and 4, including the award winning A Suitable Boy and Q&A. In addition to the theatre, he has also been working in the radio industry in Mumbai since 2001 as a disc jockey, programmer, producer and voice-over professional.

BWW catches up with Khan on his love for performing arts

You have worked in theatre in many different roles such as a director, actor, producer, sound and light technician and stage manager. What has been your most favorite role and why?

My first involvement with the theatre was as an actor. I had a two-minute role in a play in college and got the surprise of my life when I was also credited as Assistant Director in the brochure. From that point on, I pretty much did anything I could to keep myself involved with the theatre. If I had to pick one role as favorite, I'd definitely say I enjoy direction the most. For me, it's the most challenging and satisfying thing to be able to have a vision for a text and put that into action, successfully. Also, it feels the most dynamic to me, in the sense that as director the work never really stops. There is constant room for improvement and tweaking and re-imagining things from show to show, which always keeps it fresh and challenging.

Tell us about your innings with Aadyam and how Initiatives like these are changing the face of Indian theatre

Aadyam has been a real breath of fresh air in the Indian theatre scene. I feel very flattered and privileged to be involved for the third year running. It's a wonderful thing to be given the opportunity to work on a production and bring it as close to one's expectations of it. That's only possible with support. Aadyam has been very clear that they are here to support Indian theatre, and later the performing arts in general - and they are making sure they do just that. It's an amazing initiative. What they're also doing is helping grow the audience base for theatre, which is a very important thing.

What has been the experience like directing Anand Express your latest play? Talk to us in detail about it.

Anand Express has been landmark for me because, for a long time now, I wanted to do a production the way I think it should be done. What I mean by this, is gathering a design team for the show that from day 1 would be involved in the building of it. Too often, one has to come up with all the design ideas oneself and then find someone to execute them. But they're still just your ideas and while they may work for the production, the fact remains that all those areas may not necessarily be your areas of expertise. For Anand Express, the design has truly been a coming together of ideas from people who are masters of their particular wheelhouses, while also having a very strong grounding in the theatre and therefore understand the form of the medium completely.

Talk to us about your award winning production A Suitable Boy

A Suitable Boy was the first radio drama project I ever worked on. John Dryden, of Goldhawk Productions in the UK, had been commissioned by the BBC to do it. He had a very unique way of approaching radio drama; rather than going down the traditional route of getting actors to a studio and have them sit around mics, he approached it in a very guerilla / documentary style. Every scene is acted out in a location that makes sense for it with props, key costume elements, movement and blocking. The mic then follows the action around. It's quite amazing how dynamic and alive it feels, when recorded in this way. The best way to describe it would really be a very low budget film shoot, with no camera - the mic becomes the camera. For A Suitable Boy, we found a massive bungalow in Pune with several rooms of different sizes and acoustic signatures, had the actors stay there for 2 weeks and recorded from morning to evening. It was an absolute blast and sounded brilliant.

Talk to us about your radio drama experiences in the UK

Radio drama is pretty much a combination of two big loves - Radio and Theatre. It's perfect for me, really. I've been involved with a fair number of radio drama projects now, almost all with John Dryden of Goldhawk Productions, in the UK. Apart from being a very close friend now, John is also a writer-director-producer who has been doing radio drama with the BBC and others, for years. John firmly believes that any story he's telling needs to be told by voices that the characters are from, geographically. Basically, we travel to wherever the story is set, find a local theatre group and cast and record on location in that country. As a result, he's gone all over the world for projects. I've done several projects with stories based in India - as well as in Thailand, the Phillipines, Mexico and Egypt. It's the most authentic way to work, I think. I've also produced a couple for him, remotely, that he's then recorded in the UK - the most recent being Tumanbay - Series Two.

How would you describe the current theatre scene in IndiaIt's a good time for Indian theatre. There's a lot of young work happening and because of the small number of traditional performance spaces that are available to the average theatre group - either because of date availability or prohibitive rentals - a lot of alternative spaces are being used for theatre. There's a real buzz in the theatre world here, now. And audiences are growing surely and steadily. One big thing that I've noticed, happily, is that the Indian voice has now taken precedence over a foreign voice. There's a lot more original Indian work happening, as well as work by more established Indian playwrights. And with Rage's Writers Bloc, as well as other initiatives, a lot of new Indian writers are getting excellent support and training.