Simla, 1952. The air is cold, and thick with intrigue. General Yashwant Chaudhary is dead, and twelve people have come together to mourn the old officer — but one of them has also killed him. Thus we enter a game of shadows and murders, investigations and lies. Welcome to The Simla Affair.
The setting is a newly independent India, a country battling an identity crisis and a severe post-Colonial hangover. This is a land of cutthroat societal hypocrisy, elitism and casual cruelty. There are men who do not realise their place in the world has changed. They have to share space with free-thinking and defiant women — one of whom has a thing for Dev Anand.
Everybody has a secret. Everybody is lying. Watch them closely.
Writer :
Raja Sen is one of India’s most widely read film critics, having written about movies, motorsport and culture for various national and international publications. As a screenwriter, his work includes the films Chup: Revenge Of The Artist, Go Goa Gone and 99. He is currently writing a horror film. The Simla Affair is his first play.
Director :
Aditee Biswas is a recipient of Sangeet Natak Akademi’s Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar, 2012 for Theatre Direction. An Erasmus Mundus Scholar, she has an MA in International Performance Research from the University of Warwick and Universitiet van Amsterdam. Portrait of Dora, In/Out/In, Root 2, 86000 Sekendulu,Unfinished, Bali, S/he, and Untitled are some of her well known works. She presently teaches theatre at The British School, New Delhi and is the IB Career-related Program coordinator. Aditee graduated from the NSD in 2004.
Director’s Note
The Simla Affair is an entirely original work, devised in collaboration with the students. Theatre actors work so strongly with character motivations and internal truths that we felt it would be liberating for these third-year students to be plunged into the amoral world of noir, where characters have no moral compass, and can be bad for the sake of being bad.
Doing noir within the National School Drama is uncharted territory, and it has been fascinating. The genre demands lighting that hides as much as it reveals, a suspenseful use of chiaroscuro — the interplay of light and shadow — and the hardboiled feel of a black and white thriller. Or, at least, black and white and red.
This may be an old-school whodunnit, but there is a twist — within the twist. Our attempt has been to challenge 12 talented performers by hurling them into a play with an immersive and interactive final act, where the climax itself bends to the will of an audience member. The Simla Affair is, therefore, not like a movie or a paperback. This can only be a dark and shadowy play. So play along.
Group :
3rd Year Students, National School of Drama, Delhi