You don't get this world in the history books.
You don't understand the kind of impact
one man, which is Mahatma Gandhi
could have had in that time, in the time of utter chaos
and political roiling and divisiveness.
I thought there was a play in that.
(emotive piano music)
- It's such a treat, sort of meeting you in the flesh finally.
- Thank you.
- You've been on Zoom because you've been in India.
- I've been in India.
I've been on Indian Time, on Zoom.
So it's been kind of weird, when my day began
at three in the afternoon
and went on to about eleven in the evening.
- I mean, if you don't mind me asking a question,
I guess, what made you want to write this piece?
- Gandhi was a figure that
we've all revered since childhood.
On every Independence Day, Republic Day,
Gandhi's birthday, we'd have Attenborough's film being played.
- Really? Oh wow.
you know, in schools or on television.
So when I dug into the past, it took me all the way
to the pre-independence India
when our political discourse was getting quite divisive.
There was a very strident left-wing and a very strident right-wing.
There seemed no common ground
between these two groups.
- Even under the Empire.
You know, you had Gandhi's kind of politics
and you had a right-wing kind of politics.
The primary question I had at that point was -
could India have been different had Gandhi lived?
Which took me to his assassin - Nathuram Godse.
- Anu, obviously, this story is based on a lot of
facts and people, real people.
How much of the play is fact is real
and how much of it is in your imagination?
- There are huge gaps in
what is recorded of Nathuram Godse.
So the only way I could fill in
those gaps is by using my imagination.
It is fiction, but there are historical moments
in the play that I cannot but write about.
The starting point for me was
the knowledge that Nathuram Godse was brought up as a girl.
That's written about by his brother
and by the various biographies that I've read.
So that for me was the starting point
in order to understand his journey
from being this kind of a child with this interesting
childhood and looking at him
as the killer he ends up being.
He came into the limelight
only in the forties.
He was involved in certain movements
during the independence struggle.
So, those plot points were there, they're established facts.
But to flesh them out as a story, you have to
- Make things up!
- Make things up, which is the role of a dramatist.
So if you're looking at, if you're expecting
a history lesson that is completely factual,
this is not it.
- Because in a way this play is a memory play, it's a political play,
but also because we're performing it in England,
it was really important for us
that we didn't fall into the tropes
of what is a touristic India version,
image on the stage, what people might, you know, recognise
or that's a bit too obvious and often stereotypical,
you know, can be stereotyped.
So it's, it's been an interesting journey.
I don't think I've worked with a playwright as many times
(Anu laughs)
as Anu.
- I haven't written that many plays either, so.
- Yeah, but we first worked together at the Royal Court
- 2007, wasn't it?
- Yeah, yeah.
On your first play and this is our fourth play together.
Immediately, the minute I got this, I knew this project was happening,
I knew Rajha was the person I wanted to work on it.
I just knew you would have a different perspective on it.
And your work is so in the world,
but challenges the boundaries of what theatre is.
And that's, that's, what really excited about it.
I just knew I needed those eyes
and that perspective on this project.
- I sculpt space, which is kind of a strange way to
I mean, I wanted to study sculpture,
but it didn't happen.
But theatre, it's about form and space
and bodies in that space.
So I think for me it was just sort of, I guess,
getting to grips with the Olivier is the first big challenge.
Second, it was Anu's script.
So I mean, of course, you know,
Indhu turns up every time at my studio
and I'm sitting there going,
''I haven't really moved very far with this.
I'm still trying to dissect it.''
I'm a mathematician, I trained in maths
and so that was my first degree and then I kind of shifted into theatre.
So I'm very analytical when I look at work,
so it's just sort of with text, I'm dyslexic.
So of course, I start to see things in form.
So I dissect and for me I sort of literally went
and did a script analysis,
and then it was okay, well actually,
there's only four locations for Godse.
I kind of distilled it because we jump about quite a lot,
you know it's like a film basically the script is very filmic.
That's what I'm finding really, really interesting,
because my experience of India was
14 hours in an airport as a stop off.
So I literally went in quite fresh and,
I'm still delving and finding so many little details.
I guess it's a culture that, you know,
we all think we know from the films
or sort of musically or whatever it is.
But actually the complexity I think
is what I'm finding really interesting.
- What I hope the power of the play, when we get on, you know
is that it has both the emotional truth,
it has a political, it's a political play with a big heart,
because it's trying to grapple with very big ideas,
but through characters' journeys.
And you know, it encapsulates a vast time.
It's like almost 40 years of history we put on stage.