Of betrayal and redemption

Every time a much-loved book or film gets adapted for the stage, there are a few noises made about whether the adaptation stayed true to the writing or not. 

However, that’s not something Akarsh Khurana is concerned with. The theatre director, producer and actor has taken on the mammoth task of helming the stage adaptation of author Khaled Hosseini’s 2003 international bestseller, The Kite Runner, for the fifth season of Aadyam, Aditya Birla’s theatre initiative.

“The adaptation by Matthew Spangler has managed to capture the essence of the book and we have not deviated from it,” he told us. While purists might have certain issues with some things which might have been left out or modified, Akarsh believes that adaptations do allow room for a bit of flexibility. “I’ve seen a fabulous production of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time where they crossed a lot of boundaries with the way they staged it and took a lot of liberties, which worked so well. You can’t really recreate everything but it’s important to retain the soul and the essence of the story,” he says.

Akash Khurana, Nipun Dharmadhikari and Adhaar Khurana rehearse the play

When Akarsh first read the book and saw the film, he thought they were good but it wasn’t until he came across the adaptation by Matthew that he thought of taking it on. Having an affinity for tales from the Middle East, he was drawn to this gripping tale of love and friendship, betrayal and redemption set against the backdrop of wartime Afghanistan. “Apart from the cultural similarity, I think their stories resonate very strongly with Indian audiences also because people are able to relate to the fact that these stories arise out of conflict. The great thing that the authors writing such stories have done is that they have tried to find the human story in the middle of all that destruction and chaos,” he adds. For the play, Akarsh has managed to bring together some popular theatre and film actors including Kumud Mishra, Akash Khurana, Muskkaan Jaferi, Abhishek Saha, Adhaar Khurana, Nipun Dharmadhikari, Shubrajyoti Barat, Lisha Bajaj, Navendra Mishra, Sarthak Kakar, and Sumit Raj Yadav, as part of the cast.

For Akarsh, the focus lies in the emotional core of the protagonist Amir’s journey, and to make sure that the audience is invested in him and his journey. And that’s where the challenge lay for Nipun, who plays the central character from the age of 12 to 40. “There are so many layers to Amir, with the loss of his mother, his father blaming him for his wife’s death, his dilemma about whether he should treat Hassan as a friend or as a servant, the guilt he carries for what happens to Hassan and what happens in Afghanistan. To portray all that without making it sound boring or without making it monotonous is a challenge,” admits Nipun.

The play opens at Jamshed Bhabha Auditorium on August 31, 2019