The age of love

Divya Palat’s new play takes a hilarious look at relationships and urges people to loosen up

Everyone, who has ever fallen in love, will agree that it’s the strangest yet the most universal emotion that makes you do a lot of crazy things that you wouldn’t do otherwise. Despite the light-hearted tiffs, serious quarrels and bitter-sweet arguments, you soon realise that you can’t live with or without that special someone. Actor and playwright Divya Palat highlights this fact through the lives of three couples in various stages of relationships and a man on an eternal quest of love in her new play Let’s Talk About Love. The couples comprise two teenagers who are dating, a duo living in together and a married couple.

Palat, who always wanted to write a romantic play, decided on this topic as she wanted to take a light-hearted look at relationships. “In general, I find people funny. But I find people in love funnier. Sometimes when I rewind in my mind the fights that I have had with my husband (actor Aditya Hitkari) I find it hilarious. And that’s the same across ages. When teenagers fight, they keep asking each other to hang up, which is quite silly but true. These small things make relationships hilarious. Let’s Talk About Love actually captures how people change over the years.”

Palat introduced a single man searching for love so that people who are not in a relationship can identify with him. “He’s a hilarious character who has a fixed idea about love and his searching for his ideal woman. Even in our every day lives, we have friends, who are single and those who are married or dating.”

The playwright, who likes to laugh at herself, encourages people to do the same through Let’s Talk About Love. “The audience can see themselves in these characters. It’s a real comedy based on people whom I know and the situations that I have been in. We tend to take ourselves seriously. But at times we should laugh at ourselves too,” says Palat, who wrote the first act this February after much prodding from her husband. She also performed along with the actors in a preview at the Kala Ghoda festival. It garnered a good response. “After the preview, the audience was quite excited and kept asking me questions about what happens to the three couples. That actually prompted me to write the second act and tie all the loose ends. I have deliberately made the second part funnier than the first.”

Palat has always presented previews of her works at the Kala Ghoda fest to understand the viewers’ reactions. “Over there, the audience has no illusions about what to expect. Their reactions say it all. It’s always a good yardstick for me to gauge my work and plan my plays accordingly.”

Palat is also acting in her new play with her husband. The duo is portraying a married couple. Quiz her, if the instances in Let’s Talk About Love, are based on her married life and she admits, “Some incidents are inspired from our lives.” Aditya Hitkari, who plays Palat’s husband, says sheepishly, “In reality, we argue but not as much as we do in this play. Let’s Talk About Love is unlike what our married life is. All the stories are interwoven and look at different stages of love.”

Karan Sagoo, who was last seen in fashion-based reality show Making The Cut on MTV and played a cameo in Rishta.com, makes his stage debut with this play. The actor, who has done theatre back home in the United Kingdom, is enacting the role of a man who is compelled to marry his girlfriend and becomes jittery after she gets pregnant. He confesses it took him some time to accept the different working style in India. “In London, usually the venue is booked for an exclusive performance and you get an opportunity to rehearse on stage continuously. That makes the performance natural. But that’s not the case in India. So I had to get accustomed to it. I also had to change my mannerisms to enact my character convincingly.”

Khushboo Hitkari, who plays a teenage girl in the play, sought inspiration from her own experiences. “In the first act, I play a college girl, while in the second act, I’m a working woman who shares a strained relationship with her former boyfriend. I observed people around me and thought how the concept of love has changed since the time I was in college. That helped me add a natural element to my character.”
Let’s Talk About Love will premiere at National Centre for The Performing Arts, Mumbai on July 24.