Still Waiting For Godot

After 40 years, and 42 productions, Motley, the theatre group co-founded by Naseeruddin Shah and Benjamin Gilani, is still hungry for more

- Kathakali Chanda

Long before a retail chain coined the catchphrase ‘A lot can happen over coffee’, Naseeruddin Shah and Benjamin Gilani, who were in Lucknow for the shooting of Shyam Benegal’s Junoon (1978), had stepped out of their “fancy hotel” for a cup of coffee. As they wound up at the Indian Coffee House at Hazratganj, the conversation veered towards theatre and Shah, who had done a few plays with thespian Satyadev Dubey, asked Gilani how come he hadn’t worked in any despite being in Bombay for four years. “Humko milke kuch karna chaahiye [we should do something together],” Shah proffered, and Gilani’s mind flashed back to an extract of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting For Godot, which he had seen when he was a student at St Stephen’s College in Delhi.

Godot wasn’t a favourite of Shah’s and he had dissed it in an essay while at Delhi’s National School of Drama (NSD). However, Gilani’s insistence and the promise of a production with minimal resources convinced him of the idea. Shah would be glad that it did, for their two-man endeavour, christened Motley, has now turned into a colossus in the theatre landscape, celebrating its 40th anniversary in July with Motleyana, a festival from July 16 that features one revival and four running plays of their 42 productions.

Shah and Gilani have greyed in appearance, but vignettes of their youth resonate in the friendly barbs they trade while chatting in Shah’s drawing room in the company of actors Ratna Pathak Shah and Akash Khurana, among members of Motley’s first core team. “In six well-chosen words,” Shah asks Gilani, this time over a cup of tea, “tell us why you decided to do Godot.”