ONE of India’s most prolific theatre groups was conceived in a Lucknow coffee house but birthed in Mumbai the same year as this paper. The performance powerhouse team of Benjamin Gilani and Naseeruddin Shah, later joined by Tom Alter, conceived Motley, a production house that continues to successfully run with sold-out shows.

But its beginnings were humble. Actors often speak of having gone among the audience with a hat to collect funds. Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot was the first play that the three friends from Pune’s Film and Television Institute of India staged on an evening in 1979 at Juhu’s Prithvi theatre. There on, their arthouse cinema careers may have flourished, but Motley continued to stage productions keeping the city’s theatre lovers in touch with sophisticated drama, including under the tutelage of legendary director, the late Satyadev Dubey.