Beena Sarwar 
I went to see Madho last night with my mother at the Third South Asia Theatre festival, SAATh 2024, in the Boston area. A musical play set in Lahore, it is written and directed by Sarbpreet Singh, an engineer by profession whose passion is music and storytelling.
Based on the timeless tale of the Sufi poet Shah Hussain and the Brahmin youth Madho Laal, who became known as one entity, the story also highlights the syncretic culture of this region.
I had met Singh in 2014, when I saw his moving poem-play Kultar’s Mime in Somerville MA, based on the 1984 Sikh massacre in India.
The nonprofit Off-Kendrik, a platform for Bengali/South Asian American theatre in the greater Boston area, started the SAATh festival here in 2022. ‘Kultar’s Mime’ was among the offerings.
Sarbpreet Singh published his book The Sufi’s Nightingale based on the story of Madho Laal Hussain in 2023. This subsequently became the basis for the play Madho although he is quick to clarify that he is neither a playwright nor a director.
Not surprisingly, the crowd that nearly filled the 339-seater auditorium at the Mosesian Center for Arts, Watertown, MA, was largely Bangla-speaking. Many seemed to know each other.
‘Kendrik’ means ‘centre’ in Bangla, explained activists Mona Mondal and Somnath Mukherji when we ran into each other at the festival. They are among the many progressive Southasians* in the greater Boston area, also part of the Boston South Asian Coalition. This is among the nearly 100 organisations that have endorsed the Southasia Peace Action Network calling for collaboration and cooperation in the region.
The SAATh organisers are eager to include other communities. I have been hearing from them since they started in 2022.
“We need to appreciate each other,” said Dr. Partha Ghosh speaking after Madho. While the current theatre festival features plays in five languages – the non-English ones have English ‘supertitles’ – he’d like to see future festivals include 45 languages.
Off-Kendrik started over 16 years ago, “committed to building a broad platform for South Asian theatre groups and the next generation of South Asian Americans through theatre and storytelling”.
We had not planned to stay on beyond Madho but couldn’t bring ourselves to leave – up next was And Then I Met You, a one-woman show by Pakistan-born New York-based Natalya Samee, in which a data analyst uses spreadsheets to combat her romantic idealism. Her previous show Saturn Return premiered Off-Broadway and later debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August ‘23.
The current show, lively, raunchy, raw and vulnerable, is a “work in progress” directed by Arpita Mukherji and Neal Gupta of Hypokrit Live Arts in New York.
The last play of the evening, An (Extra)Ordinary Incident, in Bangla with English super subtitles, was about a “seemingly innocuous incident between a teacher and his student.” It sounded intriguing so we stayed. And I’m so glad we did.
This immensely powerful and complex story written and directed by Shanto Ghosh adapted from David Mamet’s farsighted play Oleanna, is produced by ENAD Theatre and is heading to Chicago soon. Besides Boston, they have branches in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as Bangalore, India.
The last play of the festival is Laxman-er Shaktishel, based on Lokkhoner Shaktishel, an early 20th century farcical retelling of an episode from the Ramayana. The original “has been one of the most enduring children’s plays in Bengal”.
There are too few cultural offerings for children, and I’m eager to see what director Shanka Bhowmick, one of the founders of Off-Kendrik, has done with it.
The schedule and ticketing information are online at the SaathFest website.
Beena Sarwar is a journalist and journalism teacher in Boston. She is founder editor Sapan News Network.
This is a Sapan News syndicated feature.