Lakshmi Poojan
Lakshmi Poojan is a Gujarati play in two acts — 2 hours 15 minutes with intermission — written by Uttam Gada and directed by Manoj Shah, with music by Kaniya, sets by Kabir Thakore, lights by Asmite Pathare, and a cast including Pratik Gandhi, Bhamini Oza Gandhi, Satchit Puranik and Trupti Thakkar. Produced by Ideas Unlimited. The destinies of Sonali and Viraj are tied together since they were children — by a single note of one song. That note haunts them for years. Two decades later, the same note brings them back to each other, and they fall madly in love. But — yes, there is the usual but — both their families are staunch enemies. So love is in peril, and has to survive the trials and tribulations of the story. Sounds familiar? This love story is startlingly different. It is a laugh riot, a roller-coaster ride as never seen before. The stage is teeming with strange and weird characters — more than twenty-two of them. The action moves from Nal Bazar to Nepean Sea Road to New York and back at breakneck speed. There is singing, dancing, fighting, breaking arms and legs, and breaking hearts. And, somewhere in all of it, there is a race to invent something that will change the face of the planet. All this — enacted by just four actors. Love survives. The music survives. And so does the planet.
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Amar Fal
The Eternal Story of Raja Bharthari
He was the chosen one — a king, chosen by the omnipresent for the element that would make him immortal. The undying love for his queen made him bestow the fruit of life on her, only later to question the very meaning of life. Amar Fal is the story of Raja Bharthari, which ends as the story of Sant Bharthari. Written by Bharat Naik and directed by Manoj Shah, the play traces a king's shattering journey from royal power to spiritual awakening — from the intoxication of love and sovereignty to the stark clarity of renunciation. Bharthari has been a mystery since the 5th century. Numerous scholars have tried to decipher his works — from the Dutch in 1651 to the French in 1670 to the Germans in 1882. He formed the basis of notable thinkers' thoughts for centuries thereafter. His works have been translated into English, Greek, Russian, Marathi, Brij, and Hindi. With Kalidas as his close friend and Gopichand as his nephew, Bharthari's story becomes all the more transcendent. When the fruit of immortality reaches Bharthari through divine grace, he gives it to the queen he loves above all else — only to discover the fruit has passed through a chain of betrayals. Dejected and crestfallen, he questions everything. He watches his world burn in a towering inferno. The more he questions, the more he finds answers — answers that lead to the realisation that reality is nothing but an illusion. This realisation, dawned on a cremation ground in the company of the almighty, transforms him. He writes as he thinks — Shringar Shatak, Niti Shatak, and ultimately Vairagya Shatak — works that taught the world the fundamentals of Moksha. With Dharmendra Gohil as Raja Bharthari, Pratik Gandhi as Ashwapal, and Manoj Shah himself as Guruji, Amar Fal is a visually rich ensemble production that brings one of India's most enduring legends to the Gujarati stage.
Jal Jal Mare Patang
The Burning Kite — Life of Manilal Dwivedi
The story of Manilal Nabhubhai Dwivedi (1858–1898) — the philosopher, writer, and literary critic who blazed through forty years of life with an intensity that redefined Gujarati literature and introduced Western philosophy to Gujarat. Married at fourteen to a four-year-old girl. Professor of Sanskrit at Samaldas College, Bhavnagar. Founder of Priyamvada, India’s first women’s magazine. Invited to the Parliament of World Religions in Chicago in 1893 — the same event where Vivekananda gave his famous speech — but could not afford to attend; his paper on Hinduism was read by Virchand Gandhi in his absence. His Raja Yoga was praised by Edwin Arnold and later read by Mahatma Gandhi in a South African prison. Narmad, the founder of modern Gujarati literature, considered him his intellectual heir. The era of Gujarati literature from 1885 to 1905 is named after him: the Mani-Govardhan Era. Manoj Shah spent seven years researching before staging this play. Written by Mihir Bhuta and drawn from Dwivedi’s autobiography Atmavrittanta — compared to Rousseau’s Confessions — the production features backdrop paintings by Atul Dodiya, one of India’s foremost contemporary artists. It premiered on 28 February 2009 at NCPA and received an A-certificate from the Maharashtra Censor Board of Theatres for its frank depiction of Manilal’s personal life. The title translates as ‘the kite burns as it flies’ — a metaphor for a life that blazed brilliantly and briefly. Manilal died at forty, writing at his desk in Nadiad.
Vastupal Tejpal
A Tale of Toil and Selfless Giving
Vastupal and Tejpal were brothers who rose to become ministers of the Vaghela court in thirteenth-century Gujarat, and who spent the fortune they built on the marble that still stands at Delvada on Mount Abu and at Girnar — carving so fine it remains among the highest achievements of Indian temple craft. Dineshbhai Modi's play is the story of how they got there. It does not open with the brothers. It opens a generation earlier, with a scandal. Kumardevi, widowed in her twelfth year and sent home two months after her wedding, is to be married again — to Asaraj, son of the minister of Patan — on the word of Acharya Haribhadrasuri, who has read her palm and been visited by Shasandevi with a prophecy: two sons of extraordinary lustre. Her father Abhu Sheth, who wants nothing more than his daughter's happiness, can only ask the question that stops him: widow remarriage — what will society say? His wife tells him to put society aside. The two sons of that defiant match are Vastupal and Tejpal. What follows is a chronicle of reversal and repair. Born to privilege, the brothers lose their wealth and keep their integrity, rebuild it through honest trade until they are among the foremost merchants in Gujarat, and are then raised to ministerial office, where they turn on the corruption and drift of the administration they have inherited. The poster called it a tale of toil and selfless giving — parishram ane parmarth — and the play holds both halves: the labour that makes a fortune, and the decision to spend it on something that outlasts you. Manoj Shah staged it on a grand scale, with Prasad Walavalkar's stone-palace set, Rajiv Bhatt's costumes, Bhotesh Vyas's lighting and Suresh Joshi's score, and a company of sixteen actors — among them a young Malhar Thakar, six years before Chhello Divas made him a name in Gujarati cinema. It was commissioned by the Jain Adhyatma Studies Circle Federation, whose lifetime chairman, Dineshbhai Modi, wrote it, and presented by Kaustubh Trivedi. It opened on a Sunday evening at Yashwantrao Chavan Pratishthan, Nariman Point, on 31 May 2009.
Achalayatan
Rabindranath Tagore's Allegory of Freedom
Tagore's searing allegory of an ashram so rigid that even light is forbidden entry. A young student named Panchak, unable to cope with the dead weight of rules, peeks through a forbidden window and discovers a world outside — free, simple, alive. His encounter with the untouchables beyond the walls sets him on a path of self-discovery that challenges the very foundations of the institution. When the Guruji finally arrives, he does not repair the system — he breaks it open. Adapted into Gujarati by Giridhar Kripalani under the guidance of Kaka Kalelkar, this production was Ideas Unlimited's tribute to India's first Nobel laureate. Manoj Shah spent eight months — six in study, two in rehearsal — preparing the play, calling it one of Tagore's best crafted works. The production premiered at the five-day Tagore Festival in Kolkata at G. D. Birla Sabhagar, where it was the only Gujarati-language play presented — a bold choice that brought Tagore's most scathing critique of institutional orthodoxy back to his own city, in a language he never wrote in.
Apurva Avsar
The Spiritual Mentor of Mahatma Gandhi
Apurva Avsar — meaning 'a rare occasion' — is a Gujarati biographical drama based on the life and teachings of Shrimad Rajchandra (1867–1901), the Jain philosopher, poet, mystic, and social reformer whom Mahatma Gandhi called his spiritual guide and refuge in moments of crisis. Born in Vavaniya, a small village near Morbi in Gujarat, Rajchandra recalled his past lives at the age of seven. He became a master of poetry, Shatavadhana (the feat of simultaneously tracking a hundred different tasks), and astrology. His fame spread across the country — yet he renounced it all, concentrating on self-restraint and the pursuit of liberation from the cycle of births and deaths. Against his own will, he married and entered business, which flourished across India and beyond, but his hours remained consumed by spiritual inquiry. Wanderers and seekers visited him constantly. The play brings together three towering figures of Jain spiritual history on a single stage — Acharya Hemchandra (11th century), Avdhut Anand Ghanji (17th century), and Shrimad Rajchandra (19th century) — tracing 2,500 years of a living philosophical tradition. Three actors perform fifteen characters in a theatrical challenge that moves from Rajchandra's childhood visions through his meetings with Gandhi in Mumbai in 1891, their searching correspondence while Gandhi was in South Africa, and Rajchandra's final renunciation. Dramatized by Raju Dave and Manoj Shah after a year and a half of research, the play premiered at Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai on 28 February 2007. It has since been performed across India and in the United States, including at the Jain Center of Southern California. A Hindi adaptation by Prayas Dave followed the same year. The subject matter is drawn from the everyday texture of society — the treatment is realistic, so that any common person can relate to how Jain culture has shaped Indian heritage, religion, language, literature, and philosophy in ways both visible and profound.
Bhav Prapanch
The Soul's Journey Through Worldly Illusion
Based on the Upamitibhavaprapancha Katha by Siddharshi Gani — a 10th-century Sanskrit text that Hermann Jacobi called the first allegorical novel in Indian literature, predating Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress by seven centuries. The play follows Dramak, an ordinary soul trapped in the city of Adrishyamool Paryant — a place that stands for the world as we know it, governed by greed, attachment, illusion, and desire. Dramak lives a bestial existence, wasting his time in futile efforts to preserve his meagre possessions. Caught in the bonds of attachment and illusion, believing the worldly illusion around him to be truth, he accumulates infinite karma and moves further from liberation with each birth and death. But there exists a Maharaja's royal temple — maintained with skill and devotion by servants who guide souls toward spiritual liberation through dharma, renunciation, compassion, and mercy. Their hands are always extended. The question is whether Dramak will take hold. The concept was distilled from Siddharshi's 16,000-verse original by Dr. Jitendra B. Shah, Director of the L.D. Institute of Indology, and dramatised by Prathang Dave and Raju Dave. Kabir Thakore designed the sets and Kanhaiya composed the music. The tagline reads: the end of sorrow is the beginning of peaceful happiness.