Miya Biwi Ke Mantakha is set on taking Hyderabad’s humour and heart to the world
Bringing together love, humour and the wonderfully absurd ways people navigate relationships, Miya Biwi Ke Mantakha looks at marriage, domestic life and the everyday squabbles that come with it, while reflecting Hyderabad’s unique language and culture. As the play travels beyond India, director Taher Ali Baig speaks to Indulge about its relatability, the nuances of performance and taking a story so closely connected to the city to audiences around the world.
Excerpts:
What was it the play that made you want to bring it to the stage?
What drew me to Miya Biwi Ke Mantakha was love. I always made and will continue making love stories. This is a play about love between a husband and wife. There is a particular humour, rhythm and warmth to the way married couples speak and argue. I felt that this was something worth putting on stage and celebrating. We live in a time when so much of our cultural identity is being diluted or packaged for consumption. I wanted to do something that was unapologetically local but at the same time universally entertaining.
When you first read the script, what was the image or idea that made you want to pursue this production?
The first thing that struck me was love language. A word, a pause, an expression can completely change the meaning of a line. I immediately imagined an audience responding to that rhythm collectively, laughing not just at the joke but at the familiarity of it. I also saw an opportunity to keep the production extremely simple – without burying the humour under elaborate sets or spectacle, which my previous productions had. I wanted the performers, the language and the relationship between the characters to do the heavy lifting.
What did you deliberately choose to do or not do with this production?
I don’t want to turn a Hyderabadi play into caricature. There is a fine line between celebrating a culture and performing a stereotype. So, I concentrated on performance, timing, language and character. The production is intentionally minimalistic because I wanted the audience to focus on the people on stage and the situations unfolding between them. At the same time, I wanted the play to feel contemporary in its energy. The humour may come from a particular cultural world, but the emotional situations are timeless.
Currently, theatre is one of the few art forms where the audience is physically present and can change the energy of a performance. How much of that energy influences the show?
A lot. I think theatre is the toughest form of art; there are no second chances. Comedy depends so much on rhythm; a laugh can stretch a pause, a particularly strong reaction can change the energy of an entire scene. Sometimes an audience gives the actors something that wasn’t there in rehearsal, and the actors instinctively give something back. We have to be prepared for that and discuss all possibilities before going on stage. I don’t believe in fighting that energy. I believe in riding it while still keeping the play’s structure intact. It’s a conversation. The audience completes the performance.
Do you tweak elements of the production for audiences who may not share the same cultural references as the original audience?
The core of the production remains the same. I don’t want to dilute the Hyderabadi identity of the play just because we’re taking it outside the city. However, I make minor changes based on the city we perform in to make it more relatable. I believe that storytelling should be accessible. It’s not that difficult to understand a husband and wife fighting, loving, or misunderstanding each other, or trying to get the better of one another. We get to introduce audiences to a very specific flavour of Hyderabad while helping them discover that the humour of relationships is something we all understand. Ultimately, it is a celebration of Hyderabad – its language, wit, warmth and people. The larger ambition is to take that spirit beyond Hyderabad without losing what makes it uniquely ours.
By invitation only. August 16, 7.30 pm. At The Culinary Lounge, Hyderabad.