Theatre’s immediacy should feel accessible without being diluted: Mohit Takalkar, theatre director

Dead Man’s Cellphone forms the backbone of this production. What drew you to this text, and how did you approach translating its distinctly Western absurdity into the cultural and emotional landscape of Mumbai?

What drew me to Dead Man’s Cell Phone wasn’t just its absurdity or loneliness, but the unsettling idea of stepping into someone else’s life and rearranging it without truly knowing them. What makes Sarah Ruhl’s writing remarkable is that she approaches darkness with wit, humour and extraordinary lightness. That tonal contradiction was exciting to explore.
To me, that doesn’t feel uniquely Western at all. A dead man’s phone ringing endlessly is as Mumbai as it is anywhere else—perhaps even more so here. Mumbai is excessive, layered and constantly in motion. People arrive carrying different languages, rhythms and histories. So even without altering the structure of the play, placing it in Mumbai naturally expands its texture and velocity. 

The play blends humour with melancholy. How did you strike that balance without tipping into either farce or sentimentality?

The balance already exists within Sarah Ruhl’s writing. The challenge is not to force it. The moment you consciously try to “balance” humour and melancholy, both become artificial. We focused instead on emotional truth. The actors are not performing “funny” or “sad”; they are playing need, loneliness and desire. The humour arises from situations, while the melancholy comes from what remains unsaid. These contradictions exist around us constantly. People are funny and broken at the same time. Conversations can feel light on the surface while carrying deep emotional weight underneath. That coexistence feels deeply human. We were also careful to avoid overt sentimentality. Once emotions are over-explained, the play becomes predictable. So we kept stripping things down and trusted the audience to find their own way into Asha’s journey.

Your work often experiments with theatrical language. With Dil Ka Haal Sune Dilwala, what new forms or techniques were you keen to explore?

For me, form must emerge from the demands of the production rather than a desire to appear experimental. Here, the challenge was scale and movement. Chirag Khandelwal’s adaptation travels constantly across Mumbai— from Haji Ali to Babulnath, from hospitals to bars. But through all of this, the audience has to remain emotionally anchored to Asha. If you lose that thread, the play becomes merely decorative. So the experimentation lies in fluidity. We are not building literal locations. Instead, we rely on suggestive design, rhythm and transitions so the world keeps shifting while the emotional journey remains continuous. It was also important not to “shout” design. The staging had to stay malleable and almost invisible so the pace never dropped. At the same time, clarity was essential. This isn’t theatre for a closed niche audience. The audience should never feel lost, even as the world keeps transforming around them.

Aadyam Theatre is known for supporting large-scale contemporary productions. How does this platform shape your creative process?

Aadyam Theatre offers something rare in Indian theatre—scale, resources and access to a very wide audience. Many people entering these productions may be experiencing theatre for the first time. That changes the responsibility. The idea is not to simplify the work, but to welcome audiences into it. Theatre’s immediacy and emotional power should feel accessible without being diluted.

What’s valuable about Aadyam is that it isn’t simply a funding body. There’s an entire ecosystem around the production —conversations about audience engagement, communication and how the work reaches people. That kind of structure can be very useful for independent practitioners because it demands clarity without forcing conformity.

Do you think Indian urban theatre audiences are becoming more open to experimental narratives?

I think we spend too much time asking whether audiences are ready, and not enough time asking whether we are. Audiences today already consume layered storytelling across mediums—long-form series, fractured narratives and morally ambiguous characters. The appetite clearly exists. That means the responsibility shifts to theatre-makers. We must push boundaries intelligently— not by shocking audiences for the sake of it, but by drawing them into richer experiences. Because there is so much content everywhere else, theatre becomes even more important. When someone walks into an auditorium,
 they should encounter something alive and immediate—something no screen can replicate.