Plays directed by Lillete Dubey coming to Ranga Shankara

Actor and director Lillete Dubey has adapted a book Lockdown Liaisons by Shobha De into a play, Vodka and No Tonic which she is bringing to Bengaluru at Ranga Shankara on December 17.

Lillete will also stage her premium play, Dance Like a Man which has crossed more than 600 shows worldwide on December 18. Ira Dubey’s 9 parts of Desire will be staged on December 16. In a quick chat with Showtime, Lillete talks about the plays. Excerpts:

What was the challenge involved in bringing the bits and pieces of the book on stage?

Shobha De wrote the book in 2020 during the thick of the lockdown. She asked Ira and me for the online launch of the book. We went through the book and chose two stories. She suggested that we read one each. When we read them, we got a good response and some people had shown interest to turn into a play.

At the company, we didn’t do many plays with a monologue. It was a different thing for me as a director and actor. The second play is a different portrait of a marriage and relationship during the lockdown, and the third one is the story of a girl who is gay. All of these stories required work. The fourth story is about a migrant. This story has been amplified. It is about the dilemma where he does not want to leave the city because he is in love with a co-construction worker.

This is a story of the invisible class. The last play is about a woman whose husband has died. It entangles the strange relationship they share and she cannot get over the woman for whom her husband left her and what happens when she sees that woman at the funeral. I wanted to choose 5 stories reflective of different strata, different age groups, and different issues.

Dance Like A Man discusses serious issues in a light-hearted way...

I would not say light-hearted, but that it entertains while it engages you. There are many levels in which the play propagates. On the surface, it might be making the audience laugh but the performances are very strong, and the story has proved everyone wrong. It was a special play for the company because it was original Indian writing. It is challenging and exciting.

Nine Parts of Desire by Ira Dubey is a solo play. How does she portray all of the characters?

Ira is terrific in the play. My sister had seen Nine Parts of Desire and told Ira about it. It was later written by a female Iraqi-American writer who was also an actor. Her mother was an American and she spend 12 years searching for this play. A lot of work has gone into it.

There are nine characters in the play. It is very challenging; it is Iraqi and Ira gets the accent perfectly. It has characters from the age of nine to a woman in exile in her 70s.
This play gives a Western perspective on war. It talk about women after men go to war. It’s a female gaze on the war about women in Iraq.

(Tickets available online).