The challenge of doing a play ignites in me an anxiety, a fear of whether I will be able to sustain audience interest, of forgetting your lines and no luxury of a retake.

As Shabana Azmi, Lifetime Achievement Award winner at the International Indian Film Academy Awards 2005, gears up to face a live audience in her new stage play, Betrayal, just premiered in Singapore, she stops to chat with Amita Sarwal in the green room.

Shabana Azmi with Peter Friedman

On being offered the role of Emma…

I was offered the role out of the blue. Early May I got a call from the artistic director of the Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT), Gaurav Kripalani, asking whether I would consider doing a three week run in Singapore of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal. Upon reading it, I was hooked from the very first page. Betrayal tunnels backwards in time, beginning with a meeting between the adulterous lovers, Jerry and Emma, two years after their seven-year affair has ended. I said ‘yes’ without knowing who my co-actors were going to be. I was not familiar with the work of the director, Wang Meiyin (a 26-year-old Singaporean who lives in New York), either, but I trusted Gaurav.

Simon Jones, Shabana Azmi and Peter Friedman

I wonder if Emma can be played very differently from the various interpretations that exist. The difference must come from the personalities of the actors. Patricia Hodge has played her in a doe-like manner. To me, Emma emerges the strongest of the three characters. I find there is a kind of centredness about her. Feroz Khan (of Tumhari Amrita fame) is a director whose help I frequently seek whilst working on my characters. He gave me his take on Emma. He sees her as strong, more in control than the two men, almost cold. I agree with most parts but I do not see Emma as cold at all.

On the 1978 play’s relevance today…

It’s totally about today. It has been updated and set in 2005. This is a wife having an affair with her husband’s best friend! It will continue to have relevance even 50 years from now. In fact, in writing this play in 1978, Pinter was ahead of his times.

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