Mr. Apple

Bombay Flower

The Untold Story of Ruttie Petit and Muhammad Ali Jinnah

A tribute to the legendary Parsi theatre — Bombay Flower tells the astonishingly daring story of Ruttie Petit (1900–1929), the fiercely independent daughter of Sir Dinshaw Petit, second baronet, who at eighteen married the era's most divisive political figure: Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a man more than two decades her senior. Given the sobriquet 'Bombay Flower' by Sarojini Naidu, Ruttie's exuberance fills the first half of the play — her rebellion against family, faith, and Parsi society to marry for love. In the second half, shunned by her parents and increasingly isolated by Jinnah's consuming political ambitions, she becomes an embittered woman who finds solace in theosophy, opium, and solitary wanderings across Europe. She died at twenty-nine. Written by Geeta Manek and drawn from Sheela Reddy's Mr and Mrs Jinnah: The Marriage That Shook India, the play took four years to develop. It began as a one-woman show before Manoj Shah brought in Jinnah, then Ruttie's parents, his sister Fatima, and their friend Kanji Dwarkadas. Bhamini Oza Gandhi leads as Ruttie, with Vishal Shah as Jinnah. The play premiered to a full house at the Experimental Theatre, NCPA on March 26, 2023 — an NCPA co-production. Bombay Flower is dedicated to Parsi theatre, which Manoj Shah discovered to be the pioneer of both Gujarati and Urdu theatre during his research for Master Phoolmani in 1999. It asks a question that remains relevant: why would an intelligent, sensitive young woman from a privileged background risk everything for a man whose world was entirely different from hers?

Socrates

Mukkadamo — The Trial

Mukkadamo — Socrates Trial. A 90-minute Gujarati play, directed by Manoj Shah, that returns to the Athenian court 2,400 years after Socrates' death and asks why the philosopher still refuses to leave us alone. Drawing on the writings of three of Socrates' contemporaries — the playwright Aristophanes, the philosopher Plato, and the military general Xenophon — the play assembles a portrait that no single source could give. The five cardinal virtues that anchored his teaching — courage, temperance, justice, piety, and wisdom — are not philosophical abstractions here but the framework of a man's death sentence. What makes this Socrates new on the Gujarati stage is its insistence that any work containing something eternal must be continually reinterpreted. Socrates' obsession with morality, freedom of speech, fearlessness, and self-examination is read here against Indian philosophy, finding parallels that shorten the distance between Athens and Ahmedabad. The play also takes a fresh look at the reality of his death — not as state execution alone, but as the most demanding of his own choices. The production argues that Socrates' insistence on critical thinking is indispensable today — from school education and scientific research to political understanding. After many earlier plays on Socrates, this is the one that brings him home in Gujarati.

Third Bell

Let's See Ourselves on Stage

In theatre tradition, the third bell signals that the show is about to start. But what if that bell never rings? What if the real drama is already unfolding in the seats of the auditorium? Third Bell is a meta-theatrical celebration of the audience — a series of conversations, confessions, arguments, and revelations between strangers and companions, all waiting for a performance to begin. A married couple whose argument about a bathroom break turns into a conversation about love, memory, and missed anniversaries. A grieving widow and a guarded painter who spark an unexpected friendship. Two men sitting beside each other who might be a bumbling impresario and a spy — or just very committed audience members. A first date on the edge of implosion. A father and daughter tangled in generational expectations. A narrator and director trying, and failing, to keep everything on schedule. Written by Ishan Doshi and directed by Manoj Shah, Third Bell is a tribute to those who come to watch, wait, wonder, and maybe find a little bit of themselves before the curtain rises.

Adbhut

The Wonder Within

A solo Gujarati adaptation of Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan Macmillan and Jonny Donahoe — one of the most performed plays in the world — reimagined for Indian audiences by Satchit Puranik and directed by Manoj Shah. The original play premiered at the Ludlow Fringe Festival in 2013 with Donahoe performing, before transferring to London and an HBO special. It has since been staged thousands of times worldwide. Puranik's Gujarati adaptation transforms the play's cultural texture — Doordarshan evenings replace Saturday morning cartoons, garba nights replace school dances — while preserving its radical theatrical form: the audience is the cast. From the moment the play begins, the boundary between performer and audience dissolves. RJ Devaki guides the room through the story of a girl who, at age seven, begins a list of every brilliant thing worth living for as a way to pull her mother back from the edge of depression. The list grows as the girl grows, through adolescence, heartbreak, marriage, and the quiet weight of adulthood. With nothing but a chair, a Daffy Duck sweatshirt, and extraordinary presence, Devaki turns strangers in the audience into co-performers, drawing out laughter, silence, and tears in equal measure. Adbhut is not a lecture on mental health — it is a lived experience of it, told with the warmth of someone who understands that sadness and wonder can occupy the same breath.

iSchool

An Ideas Unlimited production directed by Manoj Shah.

Lagan Magan

Lagan Ma Magan turns a grand Gujarati wedding venue into the epicentre of joyous chaos, where multiple families from different regions arrive to celebrate a series of marriages. Each family carries not only its own customs and traditions but also its distinct dialect — turning every conversation into a lively mix of familiar phrases, amusing misinterpretations, and unexpected linguistic clashes. As the celebrations unfold, the differences in dialect become both a source of humour and tension. What sounds like an argument to one family is just an animated discussion to another. Affectionate phrases are mistaken for sarcasm. Wedding rituals become battlegrounds of speech, where words hold as much power as emotions, and every blessing arrives with a pronunciation problem. As the dance, the music, the endless festivities, the laughter and the shared moments take over, the play quietly insists that dialects — though different — are threads of the same cultural fabric. Lagan Ma Magan is finally a celebration of linguistic diversity, proving that love and family always find a common language, no matter how different the words may sound.