The Vasant Gujarati Theatre Festival makes a much anticipated return with a line-up of compelling stories and performances.

Aishwarya Bodke 

In the spring of 2011, the Vasant Gujarati Theatre Festival made its arrival, carving out a crucial and urgent space for Gujarati theatre in Mumbai. Even in its maiden edition, Vasant had a keen focus on original, experimental work, quickly becoming a salient annual presence on the city’s theatre calendar. It tapped into a massive audience dedicated to the genre, which was now ready for stories that stepped away from the widely consumed slapstick and commercial plays. That something like this could be achieved only bolstered the NCPA’s resolve to bring back the platform for unconventional Gujarati plays that break away from the mainstream.

All set to make a comeback this April, Vasant features six productions, including a premiere, and a writing workshop. The Fundamentals of Writing, conducted by playwright and screenwriter Amatya Goradia, aims at helping aspiring writers articulate their thoughts and transform them into structured stories through a specially designed session.

Of letters and love songs

Naushil Mehta’s Patra Mitro – A Story Told Through Letters is adapted from A. R. Gurney’s acclaimed play Love Letters. The timeless tale has seen many a rendition, including the 1992 adaptation Tumhari Amrita performed by Shabana Azmi and Farooq Shaikh, under the direction of Feroz Abbas Khan. Mehta’s Gujarati adaptation manages to bring a fresh cultural perspective to a story set in a newly independent India. Pen pals Kalpana and Jawahar come from starkly different economic backgrounds and are born on the cusp of the Partition. A lifetime of exchanged letters are read and brought to life onstage, making way for an intimate and moving theatrical experience. Patra Mitro manages to capture the tenderness of a relationship nurtured through words, as well as the political pulse of the time alluding to the aspirations and disappointments of the Gujarati community in the ’60s.

Another poetic exploration is in store, for noted theatre-maker Saumya Joshi will bring his hugely popular musical presentation Thodi Kavita Thodu Natak Thoda Geeto to the Experimental Theatre. Performed by Joshi, along with singers Mousam and Malka Mehta with Jigar Shah on percussion, the show presents dramatised readings, songs and spoken word from his well-known works, including the Coke Studio Bharat song ‘Khalasi’ penned by him.

Joshi tells us, “Gujarati theatre has an incredibly strong musical tradition. I come from a culture of kavi sammelans and mushairas and was lucky enough to find my footing in ghazals, which the Gujarati language lends itself very well to. The poetry we present ranges from personal accounts to the lives of women in brothels to the unconventional love of Mirabai.”

Women of the hour

What is special about the 2025 edition of Vasant is the formidable presence of female narratives. A significant part of its programming are stories where women are at the forefront, bringing pertinent social themes to light. One of them is Ohh Womaniya…!, the second production by Joshi this year. Situated within a compartment of a Mumbai-bound train from Vijapur, it revolves around an innocuous conversation which takes a heinous turn. Joshi informs us that the play is inspired by a story by Ismat Chughtai and borrows from a recent incident that unnerved the country.

Jigna Vyas, who has reprised her role in Joshi’s Welcome Zindagi at the NCPA several times, gives her all to the monologue that forms the crux of Ohh Womaniya…!. The director and actor have shared a long creative partnership, their collaboration extending to the nascent writing stages.

Music is customary in Joshi’s work, always playing a significant role. It is coupled here with Pappan Dance Company’s Kalaripayattu, a martial art that has been closely associated with theatre. The piece is choreographed by the renowned D. Padmakumar, popularly known as Pappan.

Vasant 2025 will open with the premiere of theatre veteran Manoj Shah’s Clean Bold. Known for pushing the envelope, he has staged three plays—Karl Marx in Kalbadevi, Apurva Avsar and Mohan No Masalo— at previous editions of Vasant. They dabbled with unconventional subjects but managed to strike a chord with the audience and continue to be staged today.

Clean Bold is inspired by the controversial radical feminist Valerie Solanas’s 1967 book SCUM Manifesto and places it in present-day Mumbai through the character of Vijee. It takes radical leaps. Vijee quotes historical anecdotes, contemporary experiences and geopolitical examples to tear into the glorified image of man. Finding parallels with Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain’s short story ‘Sultana’s Dream’, she proposes a utopian future with no men. “I always look forward to a character who possesses a new language of communication and expression. SCUM Manifesto offered that, and I wanted to represent Solanas’s pathos and anguish within a Gujarati context,” Shah explains.

The idea came from Babu Suthar, a professor of language in Philadelphia, and was executed with careful attention to detail. Shah elaborates that they chose a dialect that would best suit the character, almost like designing a costume for her.

It will be interesting to see how a radical text manifests itself onstage in the current context. When asked about the outcome, Shah replies, “Since it is the premiere, I cannot predict the response. The moment it is onstage, the chemistry between the performer and the audience is what decides everything. For the last 40 years, I’ve been blessed with a Gujarati audience that accepts diverse subjects. They are eager and looking to be challenged.”

Then there were three

Adding another dimension to the festival is Three Men, written and directed by Ankit Gor, who is also one of the actors in the play. Through its plotline of two stepbrothers brought together due to their father’s demise, the play unearths the stigma surrounding the emotional boundaries of men or the lack thereof. It questions historically prevalent notions that men do not cry or feel pain. Vishal Shah, producer and one of the three men in the play, reiterates the lack of commentary on vulnerability in men, especially in Gujarati theatre.

A voiceover by a woman undergirds the performance even as the men take the stage, observing them in their natural habitat, mirroring a wildlife documentary—a satirical take that warns, mocks and soothes. Even when the men are in the spotlight, the female presence is predominant. When I joined a video call to talk to the men of Three Men—Gor, Shah and their fellow actor Navid Kadri—they joked that this is exactly like the play. Déjà vu, if you will.

Gor explains, “The female voice naturally adds warmth to the play. The voiceovers also bring to the fore what women feel about men through subtext. And while we go on about men and their problems, we were very cautious of it not turning into a ‘not all men’ philosophy. That is simply not what the play stands for.”

The closing play of the festival, Eklavya by Vipul Mehta, features another gripping trinity of characters. It follows the story of a cyber security recruitment officer looking for a coder, only to discover a self-taught maths prodigy who is a drug addict from Dharavi with a criminal record. She takes it upon herself to put him through rehabilitation with the help of an old colleague and psychiatrist. A complicated symbiotic relationship emerges among the three, revealing many layers of human relationships. An allegory to the mythological characters of Arjun, Dronacharya and Eklavya from the Mahabharata, the play packs an intriguing tale with twists and turns.

It is in these myriad themes and stories that Vasant finds its beating heart. With all its colour, spring has come at last.

This article was originally published in the April 2025 issue of ON Stage.