Naseeruddin Shah's versatility may have traversed many paths to create a distinct identity both for himself as an actor and for Indian cinema but it is the stage --his first love -- that always beckons him.
For more than three decades he strode with ease in both parallel and mainstream cinema, narrowing the distinction between the two, winning awards and accolades with aplomb but his heart was always in the theatre.
Shah now wants to devote his maximum energies to theatre though acting in films will continue but not with the same degree of priority.
He along with his friend Benjamin Gilani had set up the theatre group 'Motley' in 1979 with just four actors, doing plays in English with Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot being their first production.
"Initially, we did plays only in English because to us English is as Indian as any other Indian language. However, later, when we wanted to do plays in Hindi, we found that there very few good plays in the language with playwrights unwilling to write for the stage," Shah said.
In Hindi, the theatre died out with the advent of the talkies with all good playwrights turning into scriptwriters and there was a sudden vacuum with no original playwrights.
On the other hand, other genre of Hindi and Urdu literature like the short stories was very rich and so "we decided to adapt stories for the theatre."
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