New Delhi: Long before big screen films like ‘Baahubali’, ‘RRR’ and now the upcoming ‘Adipurush’ swept India off its feet, Aamir Raza Hussain was the creative powerhouse who gave us an early feel of a mega theatre. The production in ‘The Fifty Day War’, which was not repeated in any level of scale or vision until the year 2000.
On Saturday, June 3, Hussain, 66, passed away, leaving behind a legacy of memorable stage performances.
He is survived by his wife and creative partner, Virat Talwar, whom he met when she was a student at Lady Shri Ram College and had come to audition for a play (‘Dangerous Liaisons’), and two sons.
If ‘The Fifty Day War’ told the story of Kargil on a scale that no one had done on the Indian stage with an original Indian script (Alike Padamsee did something similar with Andrew Lloyd Webber’s ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’) but again, this was not the original production), ‘The Legend of Rama’, which was staged on a smaller scale in 1994, became the gold standard for theatrical spectacles when it was revived in 2004.
The making of ‘The Legend of Rama’ included 19 outdoor sets spread over three acres and a cast of 35 artistes playing various characters drawn from the epic and a 100-member technical crew. The last show was performed on 1 May 2004 in front of the then President APJ Abdul Kalam.
Hussain was born on 6 January 1957 in an aristocratic Awadhi family. His parents were divorced – his father, who can barely be seen, was an engineer with Bechtel and installed the Mecca-Medina water works – so he was raised by his mother and Family – During the days of the British Raj, he presided over a small princely state named Pirpur.
He went to Mayo College, Ajmer, and after completing his schooling, read History at St. Stephen’s College, where he acted in several college plays under the direction of luminaries such as Joy Michael, Barry John and Marcus Murch. This was the early start of a career devoted to English theater and his company, Stagedoor Productions, which has been known for elevating ordinary theater into the realm of the spectacular since 1974.
Hussain appeared in two films – Kim (1984), based on Rudyard Kipling’s novel, starring Peter O’Toole, and Shashanka Ghosh’s romantic comedy drama, Khubsoorat (2014), starring Sonam Kapoor. Kapoor and Fawad starred. Khan – but he was married to the theatre.
Over the years he staged several plays at outdoor venues – ‘Saare Jahan Se Accha’, ‘1947 Live’ and ‘Satyamev Jayate’, which was staged in 1999 against the backdrop of the 14th-century Hauz Khas monument in Delhi.
Earlier in 1998, Hussain and his troupe, in collaboration with Delhi Tourism, had organized Chaudvin Ka Chand Utsav, a 2-km stretch between the Red Fort and Fatehpuri Masjid in Chandni Chowk, in the neighborhood now known as Dilli-6. is celebrated.
With 91 productions and over 1,100 performances behind him, and in 2001 he was awarded the Padma Shri, Hussain spent his last years developing Qila in south Delhi’s historic Saket neighborhood next to the Select Citywalk mall.
Like all things that bear the Hussain stamp, The Fort has emerged as a co-working space where corporate and creative souls work under one roof to develop business ideas or the next big theater production.
Unfortunately for Hussain, as he said in a recent interview, theater remains a hobby or better second profession in India, but fortunately, thanks to the efforts of pioneers like him, it is by no means poverty-stricken. I am not. Not to mention, it has become the nursery of cinema’s best and brightest.