Mira Nair on Bringing “Monsoon Wedding” to the Stage

In the lobby of Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Warehouse, a barat-style marching band welcomed patrons to a recent performance of Monsoon Wedding, a new musical directed by Mira Nair based on her acclaimed 2001 film. Women I would instinctively call aunties raised their phones, recording videos destined for WhatApp group chats while a few of the boldest thrust their limbs into an impromptu dance circle. The celebration had already begun.

“It should feel like this is our story,” Nair, 65, said during a recent interview. The Indian-born director has been developing a stage version of the film for the past 15 years (the most recent production ran through June 25th, and was first presented at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in 2017). The show features a book co-written by Sabrina Dhawan (who wrote the movie) and Arpita Mukherjee, music by Vishal Bhardwaj, and lyrics by Masi Asare and Susan Birkenhead.

“I wanted to keep it truthful to the sources of where these characters are from,” Nair said of assembling a largely South Asian cast and creative team. “Authentic is an overused word nowadays, but I want the person who comes from Delhi to feel at home.”

In Monsoon Wedding, that means taking an unromanticized look at what Nair refers to as a “globalizing India,” where stratification based on caste, class, religion, and access to opportunity continue to sow deep divisions. Nair has often returned to exploring these tensions over her four decades as a filmmaker, from her 1988 feature debut Salaam Bombay! to the 2020 television adaptation, which she directed, of Vikram Seth’s novel A Suitable Boy.

Like the movie, Monsoon Wedding the musical centers on an arranged marriage between Hemant (Deven Kolluri), an American-born finance bro who is ambivalent about transplanting a bride hand-picked by his parents from India to New Jersey, and Aditi (Salena Qureshi), a well-to-do “South Delhi girl” self-aware of her presumed trophy status. While their families meet and clash, a genuine connection grows between them, and another blossoms between their goofball wedding planner (Namit Das) and the bridal family’s servant (Anisha Nagarajan). Aditi’s cousin and confidant Ria (Shavari Deshpande), meanwhile, reckons with the girlhood abuse she suffered at the hands of their uncle and the family patriarch (Alok Tewari).

“You may be seeing the show in Brooklyn, but you’re hearing about America from our point of view in Delhi,” Nair said of Monsoon Wedding’s cross-cultural perspective. “So much of our lives, we have been forced by colonialism to have an intermediary who explains us. That time is long over,” Naid said.

While Monsoon Wedding illustrates social dynamics specific to India and the diaspora, Nair also considers its interpersonal themes, including love overcoming difference, as deeply universal. “How do we tell a story in which you recognize yourself?” Nair said when asked about her underlying creative approach. “Hopefully, we can allow people to see their own lives anew, and that we are no longer ‘the other,’ but as human as anyone. Theater does that very beautifully, because it’s visceral and we’re right there in front of you.”

Theater is also a homecoming of sorts for Nair, who was born in the eastern Indian state of Odisha before coming to the U.S. intending to study acting for the stage (she cites among her gurusthe downtown, experimental pioneer Elizabeth Swados and the lion of British stagecraft, Peter Brooks.) But film captured her imagination, and Nair wound up studying and making her first documentaries at Harvard.

“It sounds very idealistic, but my intention was always to change the world,” Nair said. “How much can one impact injustice by lifting the veil from social realities to which people often turn a blind eye?”