He had sorely missed the stage. That realisation hit Mahesh Manjrekar last December when he returned to theatre as an actor with Shankar Jaikishan, after a 31-year gap. Now, the filmmaker and actor is making up for lost time. Lovable Rascal, a play directed by him, opened in January. Up next is Animal, a play that he has directed, written, and will act in when it premières on March 7 at the Tata Theatre in NCPA.  

Manjrekar views Animal as a story that he couldn’t get out of his system. “You cannot call it a social drama. It is an expression of anger,” he told mid-day, adding that the all-pervasive apathy around him “compelled” him to write it. “It is based on the apathy of humans against everything that is happening in our society. We have become indifferent to things around us.”