The Good, the Bad and the Sholay by Checkpoint Theatre: We Chat with Playwright Shiv Tandan

PUBLISHED November 23rd, 2015 04:00 am | UPDATED March 27th, 2016 02:57 pm

First staged at by NUS Centre for the Arts at NUS Arts Festival 2011, The Good, the Bad and the Sholay was a collaboration between Checkpoint Theatre and NUS Stage production.

It’s the story of Raghav’s journey from the small Indian town of Ambala of his boyhood to the complexities of life in the metropolis of Singapore. It is also a personal retelling of the 1975 Bollywood classic, Sholay, which some consider the most famous Bollywood film ever made.  The exploits of its outlaw heroes form the backdrop of this insightful and funny coming-of-age story. The realities of change and loss in Raghav’s life are juxtaposed against the colourful, larger-than-life world of the film.

The playwright Shiv Tandan wrote the play while he was an NUS undergraduate, when he was under the mentorship of Huzir Sulaiman, Joint Artistic Director of Checkpoint Theatre then. The first staging received three nominations at The Straits Times Life! Theatre Awards for Best Original Script, Best Director, and Production of the Year.

In the new staging of the play, four years after the original production, the play will be co-directed by both Shiv Tandan and Huzir Sulaiman.

We asked Shiv Tandan to give us his insights on the play:

From left: Shiv Tandan & Huzir Sulaiman

What inspired you to write The Good, the Bad and the Sholay?

I had been writing poems and short stories for a couple of years when I attended Huzir’s playwriting workshop. My initial plan was to just write a version of the film Sholay for the stage, and I proposed that during our first workshop session. But then Huzir urged me to think about why Sholay was important to me, what it meant to me. So I started writing with that in mind, and discovered that while my world had transformed completely twice within three years – new city, new country, new culture – Sholay was a comforting, unmoving reference point…That’s how the Sholay play idea turned into a much more ambitious project of trying to tell the story of the world that was, how we got here, and how the protagonist Raghav deals with all of it.

So what does the play really mean to you? 

The play is my coming of age a writer. It helped me believe that I had something to offer, and that perhaps my words do carry weight. So I’m keen to tell that story again with as much vigour and love as we did back in 2011.  Also, I think I’m equally, if not more, connected to the story today than when I wrote it. India’s sprint towards development is moving faster today than ever before. The struggle of helplessly (if excitedly) trying to ride that wave is very contemporary.

The play was first produced in 2011 – will this production follow the same format or will there be changes?

The heart is still the same, because the text is identical to the one we performed in 2011. But in terms of staging, we are going full throttle. The 2011 staging was a student production, and we had constraints in terms of rehearsal time, resources etc. This time, it’s no (or far fewer) holds barred. The costumes are different, the set has grown, and the cast is doing more ambitious physical and vocal work. I think overall, it’ll be a bigger, more colourful, exuberant show. But that also means that we’re undertaking an even deeper investigation of Raghav’s story, and I personally am trying to understand what I was writing about all over again.

Who are the cast members?  Will any members of the original play be reprising their roles?
We have an ensemble of eight wonderful professional actors with a great facility for physical theatre and comedy, including Chanel Ariel Chan, Chng Xin Xuan, Ghafir Akbar, Deborah Hoon, Kubhaer T. Jethwani, Thomas Pang, Pavan J. Singh, and Julie Wee.  Kubhaer Jethwani was in the original cast, but we’ll leave which character he’s playing to the night of the show. The surprise of who ends up as who is part of the fun!

If you could play any character in Sholay, which would it be? Why?

I’d love to play the Imam, strange as that might sound. I think I’m a very restless soul – I’m bouncing off walls a lot of my life. And the Imam is this really grounded, peaceful man who seems to be so at ease with himself and with his surroundings. That would be very hard for me to pull off; I’d love to give that a shot and hopefully some of that peacefulness will rub off on me.

You’ll be directing this production with Huzir Sulaiman. How do you feel about that?

It feels natural and daunting at the same time. Huzir and I co-directed #UnicornMoment last year, so this is my second time working with him. I love working with Huzir because our wavelengths really match on most fronts. We’re usually thinking the same thing, so decision-making becomes a lot easier, and we have a lot of trust going into the production as a team because we know we can depend on each other.

The biggest (perhaps only) challenge is that Huzir is always so immaculately dressed that it’s a little difficult to keep up with him!

The Good, the Bad and the Sholay by Checkpoint Theatre is part of Kalaa Utsavam 2015.

The play will be running from Thursday, 26 November to Sunday, 29 November 2015 at the Esplanade Theatre Studio. Get your tickets here.