My Heart Goes Thadak Thadak Play

INFO

Name	My Heart Goes Thadak Thadak
Year	2019
Playwright	Ahilan Karunaharan அகிலன் கருணாகரன்
Type of Text	Play
Artform	Theatre

ABOUT

My Heart Goes Thadak Thadak is a play written by Ahi Karunaharan. Presented as part of a major commission by Silo Theatre in 2019, it premiered as an interactive theatre show directed by Karunaharan himself, ‘complete with fight sequences, live music, and a rambunctious dance number finale’. The play is staged in two acts, where audience members enter the world of a Desi Western film shoot that’s rapidly falling to pieces, witnessing high conflict chaos between family, directors, actors, producer and crew while participating as ‘extras’ on set, before watching and engaging in the staged film ‘production’ within the second act.

The play is set in Mumbai in 1975, during the rapid expansion of India’s film industry and at a time when Western cultural and filmic influences were taking strong root. The 1970s is a time period described by Brannavan Gnanalingam as when “the film industry (and Indian society more generally) was starting to undergo some seismic shifts”, and the hallmarks of what was considered Indian and Bollywood cinema began to change amidst globalisation. Gnanalingam explains that cult Hindi films such as Sholay (1975) were inspired by Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns, a reference that features strongly in the play, and that movies starring well-known Western actors like Clint Eastwood were proving hugely popular in South Asia in this period. This era set the stage for India to become known as the world’s largest film industry by the 1980s.

In an interview, Karunaharan explains how My Heart Goes Thadak Thadak is an homage to the sort of films that his parents grew up watching as South Asian diaspora living in Aotearoa New Zealand, sprung from his childhood obsession with Indian Cinema and Spaghetti Westerns, and imagining what the collision between the two of them might look like on stage. As mentioned by Karunaharan, “The 1970s is when we had the most Western immigration to India… It was a time that begged to be examined theatrically. Both for its imagery, celebration and the shifting sands of cultural and gender representation”

The play begins with the death of esteemed film director Rakesh Ramsay, who dies in the middle of shooting his magnum opus, the ‘Dust of the Delhi Plains’ leaving behind an unfinished legacy project and the impetus on his family to complete his final work. His children – daughter Kamala, and son Roshan – battle over the Director’s chair, fighting over the expertise that assert their capacity to lead, gender biases, conflicting viewpoints over Western influences, and the overarching question of ‘whether to honour the past or turn a new face to the future’. Trouble ensues for the characters, as “they’ve inherited a disaster: the crew’s unhappy, the money’s all gone and the big Bollywood star is holding the production hostage.”

Supporting characters in the plot include Manjit, a friend of the late director who’s been managing the chaos and has invested his entire savings into the production, Shankar, an aspiring actor who weasels his way into the film crew for his chance at minor stardom, and Ranikumara, a proud actress in her 40s who is determined to return to the spotlight, frustrated by the marginalisation of older womens’ bodies in film. Through the play, Karunaharan “touches on a couple of major topics lightly, specifically Indian women’s role in society and business and also the more universal older women’s roles or lack of, in the movies.”

In an interview with the director by Jean Teng for Metro Magazine, My Heart Goes Thadak Thadak is said to be “a collision of East and West, a way of exploring questions around representation, modernity and tradition, but told in a spirited, interactive way, full of divas and dancing and immersive joy. It’s a return to what Karunaharan loved as a child, and a South Asian reimagining of a typically white genre. After tackling “loss and genocide” in earlier works, he says, “I just wanted to do something fun and playful.”