Naseeruddin Shah on the play "A walk in the woods"

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Naseeruddin Shah on the play "A walk in the woods". Actor Naseeruddin Shah and director Ratna Pathak-Shah share the inspiration behind their play "A walk in the woods", running at The Naseeruddin Shah Festival in Dubai. See more at: http://gulfnews.com/gntv

Transcript

00:00I feel very privileged that the festival is being conducted and it's being called

00:14the Naseeruddin Shah Festival, though one of the plays, one of the three plays is in

00:19fact directed by my wife Ratna, The Walk in the Woods.

00:24It's an American play, it's talking about an American and a Russian at the height of

00:29the Cold War, now we are converting it, so the process of adaptation is great fun also.

00:35Which has been set now to an Indian and Pakistani setting, rather to an Indian and Pakistani

00:40character.

00:41We've kept most of the play as is because it works just fine, but the context had to

00:45be appropriate.

00:48It's not a play which bashes either country, it tries to look at the sympathetic angle

00:54and it tries to take the human angle and it appeals for person to person friendship,

00:59which is what I think is very very important, no matter what our politicians may say.

01:04It was finally a play about which all of us felt passionately, because the Indo-Pak situation

01:11we, at least I do feel very strongly about and I think Naseer feels very strongly about

01:15and over the last few years one has had an occasion to go to Pakistan and to travel and

01:22see the country and talk to people and really the commonalities are so many more than the

01:31differences and I find it so completely idiotic that we won't make friends with our immediate

01:37neighbours and that we let politicians hijack every dialogue, come on, we are all intelligent

01:44educated people, shouldn't we have some say in the matter, so these were the kind of things

01:48that drew me.

01:49I'd like to take this opportunity to appeal to all my Pakistani brothers and sisters to

01:55definitely come and watch this one and I can promise you it will have absolutely no shade

02:00of the way Bollywood poisons our minds with propaganda, well both industries, Pakistan

02:06and India do.

02:08Pakistan recently made a film called Vaar, which I was always asked about and it's a

02:11film I will never see because I do not like these jingoistic exercises, I think they are

02:16harmful and damaging to our fellow feeling and I think it's very important to keep that going.

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