The year was 1996 and this writer, having just entered her teens, accompanied her parents to a beautiful, open-air venue at Bandra Reclamation. The play that was staged there was Jaya, a modern retelling of the Mahabharata. The booming singing voices of the actors filled the air; foldable chariots made from cane arrived in the war scenes, and the actors spoke in conversational English as opposed to Shakespeare’s English. In 2024, some of these memories are still vivid, including the lyrics of certain songs; such was the impact of the play directed by Lillete Dubey. The play ran successfully for over 40 shows, post which, it was abruptly stopped due to unavoidable circumstances.

Twenty-six years later, Dubey is set to stage the 2.0 version of the play titled, Jaya! The Victory, with a new with a new cast, look, sound and sets. “When I started my company, I wanted to do original work. A friend, Lynne Fernandez, who is also designing the lights for this play, had a friend who already wrote this script; an opera/musical montage of the Mahabharata. He had been looking for a producer,” Dubey tells us, “It was complex, challenging and expensive, so he hadn’t managed to find anyone to produce it. That’s how I was introduced to the script in 1996,” she recalls.