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THE DIRECTOR'S CUT
Part of two theatre companies, QTP Productions and The Industrial Theatre Company, started in 2001, Nadir Khan is passionate about the stage: both as an actor and a director.
Although The Industrial Theatre Company focusses on "much darker, more serious experimental theatre," when QTP turned five and its founders decided to stage the Five Live Festival, where each of them would direct a play, Nadir Khan chose the comedy "Beyond Therapy." And they've been performing it across the country ever since.
Stating that "comedies are definitely a safer bet," he says, "I picked this up because I had acted in it in 2001 at the Thespo Theatre Festival in Mumbai, when I was just out of college. From then on, I had always been keen on directing it at some point."
Thrilled to have got his first choice of actors, "which in my opinion, is quite certainly the cream that Mumbai theatre has to offer," he went on to structure and tell the story "completely differently. For now, I can do what I wanted to."
A complex story with many layers, "Beyond Therapy" is more than just a funny script. "It's intelligent and witty," says Nadir Khan.
He adds that it's also a comment on "basic social life: highlighting the pressures we face in our everyday lives and relationships — the need to fit in, the stereotypes that exist in people's minds and the constant search for that one person who will accept you for what you are."
Stating that he doubts if there is "a single person around who has not been a `social chameleon,' at some point," Nadir adds that some people just "manage to do it a hell of a lot better than others."
The themes, the director insists, are universal, and not just applicable to the American context that the story was originally tailored for.
"It is about a search for belonging, the need to be in a certain way," he says, "These are insecurities that everyone faces across the globe."
On August 14, 7.15 p.m., The Music Academy
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