Actor Roshan Mathew discusses the creation of the Malayalam play Bye Bye Bypass, the process and what the team behind it means to him

Actor Roshan Mathew’s sophomore directorial play Bye Bye Bypass, co-written with actor Shruti Ramachandran and screen writer and creative director Francis Thomas, is about a set of cousins of the Athimootil family, who lose their ancestral home to the construction of a bypass. The Malayalam play has been inspired by Roshan’s own, similar experience, which, he says, he realised was more common than he thought. The six shows of the play have been staged to full houses and received with a lot of love from the audience. He talks about how the play came to be. Edited excerpts from an interview

I had been carrying the seed of this idea [play] for really long. I had told a whole bunch of people about it and even presented it on stage. I always felt that there was something more to make out of this. But I wasn’t sure what. Meanwhile, since 2018-19, we (the group that made the play A Very Normal Family ) are close friends who meet often, we talk often, and there has constantly been conversation about wanting to do another play. My deal was that we have to find that one idea that inspires all of us to sort of jump into it because the process was going to be hard, hectic and long. We needed a one-line that would inspire us. I just didn’t realise, at the departure point, that we were looking for this story. The seed or the core thought was this story [the loss of an ancestral home]. When we started working on it, I wanted everybody’s input. It was also a story that, I realized, was extremely relatable. That everybody has a story similar to this one. We decided to take all the elements from everybody’s version and make something out of it.

Obviously my co-writers Shruti and Francis were at the other end of the process — structuring everything, taking what they like out of what we threw at them and putting it down on paper. A lot of it [the play] was developed on the go.

In terms of conceptualising it, I had some clarity on what the language of performance should be. Not the spoken language, rather but what kind of a play it should be. The tone, the look and the feel of it. I had some vague ideas when we started off, nothing I could clearly put down in words but I had an idea about what the energy of it should be. As each scene, each character and each moment in the story started taking shape, the whole play also slowly started becoming clearer in our heads.  

There was a childhood home that I really liked, which I lost to a bypass road. It is altogether a very sad story, but of late, I have felt that it is universally relatable and also extremely relevant because suddenly it seemed like we were all surrounded by stories of homes being lost, especially from the perspective of children. It is an absurd thought for a child to process — the idea of losing a home in whatever sense for whatever reason. All of that prompted us to think that maybe now we try and make something out of it.

The key decision here was to just flip it [the theme] on its head and make an all out fun, entertaining comedy about it. We were talking about what makes a house, somebody can take the structure of a home from you but can they really take the home away? We were discussing these thoughts, and also figuring out that we wanted to make a fun play out of it. We want to make a happy play out of it; we wanted to tell the story through the perspective of kids. 

Movies and theatre are both forms that I really enjoy doing, and when I do one, I miss the other. That is how it has always been. I started off with theatre, movies came a little later. I fell in love with the format and then went after it with all my time and energy. Then I realised ‘oh! I have not done theatre in a very long time. I miss that.’

I realised that there is a void when I don’t do one of the two. And I did not want to believe that it was an either or situation. I always wanted to figure out a way to do both. So, initially, it was just about doing reruns of plays which I was always part of. One way was stepping in as an understudy actor for a play whenever I got the time. Then we got around to making A Very Normal Family (AVNF) in Kochi itself. This was after I approached a couple or theatre-makers in Kochi, trying to find out if they were making something I could be a part of. And when nothing worked out, this idea of getting a group together and making a little something by ourselves started.

That is what led to AVNF. All of us have been waiting to get back on stage. This is something that all of us feel, none of us wants to pick one over the other. Almost everyone in this group also does films, we want to do theatre and films. 

I wouldn’t call it a homecoming because I don’t really feel like I have left that home [theatre]. Theatre has always been a part of me, it is where I started learning and it also where I realised this [acting] is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Whatever form that I am occupied with, I feel like theatre will always be something that I consider home. 

I met Shruti and Francis for first time some time in 2018-19, when we were discussing whether it would be possible to make a fully original play by ourselves. We became very good friends very quickly. I floated the idea [of the play] with Francis, Shruti and Darshana (Rajendran) were also present, I mentioned that I wanted to maybe make a play. Francis jumped in and said yes, we can work on this. I will write this for you.

AVNF started that way. We did a version of the same process as now. We started off with an idea and we started with the rehearsals.. The rehearsals fed the writing process, whatever came out of the writing was being tested at rehearsal and eventually we arrived at a final version of the play.

Since then and through that process I realised that I have a good, enjoyable, comfortable working equation with Francis. Darshana was one of the actors in AVNF. Shruti was in it with us throughout. And when, this time, the seed of the idea came to me I went to them almost as soon as the thought came that maybe there is a play in it that we could make. This time both Shruti and Francis said they would write with me. We can be very, very honest with each other and I really value the collaborative equation I have with them.   

I don’t know. I really haven’t evaluated myself and I feel like that’s also probably not my job. These people I have been working with are all mostly close friends. It is for them to do and they do it also, very well. They keep giving me a good sense of what is working and what is not. There is always a reality check around the corner. And I value that working equation with all of them.

It is up to them to say what I am. What I am proud about personally is the group we have managed to build. It is a much bigger team, a much bigger cast [than AVNF]. How this group works as an ensemble, how they work with each other, support, respect and make each other feel secure…that group dynamic is what I feel most happy, grateful, content and proud about! 

Yes, of course that is one of the most exciting things about theatre. It obviously only exists then and there. In front of that audience you are performing to. Those one-and-a-half hours — the play does not exist before it or after it. That particular show will never exist again. It will not be repeated; it will be a different show when we do it next. This energy that we feed off of is one of the core building elements of the play itself as that one show is concerned.

We are a three-legged piece of furniture, the third leg is what the audience give us. Without them the play would not exist and it is scary and exciting and really really gratifying when you get affirmation from the audience. Something that you hear, sense and when you are losing your audience also you somehow sense it and you are on high alert again. You are thinking about what we can do to get them back into the story, to keep them in the world of the story.

That is the prime objective and I feel like that always keeps us on our toes, humbles us, grounds us and inspires us to keep doing more and more of that. 

I am most grateful for this group. Rajesh, Darshana, Santhy, Syamaprakash, Sanjay Menon… were all part of AVNF. So we have a very comfortable equation. We have known each other for a very long time. Some of the new actors for this play like Salmanul Faris, Devaki, Nilja K Baby, Aswathy Manoharan, Anoop Mohandas, Vaishakh Shankar… I am equally grateful for these people and am comfortable with them. This group is definitely the biggest strength that all of us fall back on. None of us would be able to individually do what we are doing together as a group.

And in a city like Kochi, where not a lot of theatre happens and with the way the art form functions, it takes a lot from each member of the group to make something like this possible. Every member of this group has done everything in their capability, and they continue to do that for the play, so they have been a part of everything — making it, writing it, devising of it. Even in what kind of music would work, the kind of costumes…it’s all of us together. In fact all the characters also at some point during rehearsal has been played by everybody, each character also carries little pieces of everyone else in the group.

So there is a sense of ownership that everyone has over every aspect of the play. I think it is very crucial because you don’t have the luxury really to be super focussed, to have your blinders on and just focus on what your job is. Once you get on stage you have to actually take a lot of other things as well. It is a community that is required to make something like this happen and these people have made that happen. 

We are performing on May 31 and June 1 at the Chavara Cultural Centre, Kochi, these will most probably be the last set of shows in Kochi. After this we intend to take it to other cities in Kerala and are planning a few international tours as well. We are very excited about it, this is from the six shows that we have performed.

I feel like this story resonates with a wide variety of people, the audience is a wide age bracket. We feel this is a story that we can travel with. It can be told at multiple places, to different kinds of people. We are really looking forward to finding the play new homes and new audiences. And that is also the best parts of theatre? Because the play keeps evolving, it keeps growing, it will start showing us what needs fixing or what needs to be changed or what needs to stay or what it needs to work better or differently. So the play changes after each show and that is one of the most exciting parts of the process.

With AVNF, I felt like we stopped performing it, we only did seven shows of it. There was a lot more scope for the play, to grow more. But we didn’t give it that time, with this one we want to make sure that doesn’t happen. We want to do many, many shows of this. We want to do 100 shows and see how it evolves. 

Bye Bye Bypass will staged at Chavara Cultural Centre, Kochi on May 31 and June 1; tickets on bookmyshow.com