Lina Patel and Sunil Malhotra in "A Widow Of No Importance"

A new comedy about forging new paths and vaulting for the stars, A Widow Of No Importance opens at the David Henry Hwang Theater in downtown LA on September 14.

The David Henry Hwang Theater is a performance space within a converted church and home of the nation’s premier Asian American theater company, East West Players (EWP). Launching its 46th Anniversary season, themed Languages of Love, East West presents artistic works and educational programs that give voice to the Asian Pacific American experience. Although not many East West productions have been set in south Asia, this one is set in India.

Directed by Shaheen Vaaz, A Widow Of No Importance launches the professional career of young playwright Shane Sakhrani. Sakhrani’s comedy examines the plight of a widow in modern-day Bombay and the social stigma and prejudices she encounters, including her own.

The story revolves around Deepa (played by Linda Patel), a 50-year-old who lost her husband two years previously. Her only desire now is to see her daughter married so that she can die in peace. But she’s facing pressure from her grown children and friends to break with the tradition of eternal mourning and start living again.

For those who are familiar with Irish playwright, writer, poet and notorious quipster Oscar Wilde, the title of Sakhrani’s play is a reference to Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance. Sakhrani says he wanted explicitly to reference Wilde’s play because he wanted audiences to know immediately this was comedy. Wilde produced memorable hit comedies that satirized upper-class society during the early 1890s, and Sakhrani’s play is set in the wealthy circles of contemporary, upper-class Bombay.

The playwright explains further, saying, “Traditionally, stories about Indian widows are usually told as melodramas and that’s what most people seemed to expect whenever I started describing my play. I had been through so many different titles previous to this one, and all of them made the play sound like it was a serious drama. My hope is that people who know the Oscar Wilde play will expect a comedy. But it also felt right because of how badly widows are treated and how little is thought of them.”

In his play, Sakhrani refers to two of Oscar Wilde’s most famous quotes. The first, “All of us are in the gutter but some of us are looking up at stars,” is spoken by 25-year-old Tara (Puja Mohindra) to her mother Deepa in the first scene. Sakhrani explains that it is supposed to be obvious that this reference goes unrecognized, as Deepa spends her time reading Mills & Boon romance novels while her daughter enjoys literature. The second Wilde reference occurs in a scene in a bookstore — “All women become like their mothers, that’s their tragedy.” This comment taps into Tara’s greatest fear that she will end up a housewife like her mother Deepa — which, in her eyes, would be a complete waste of her life. Tara desperately yearns to go away to study in America in order to avoid this dismal fate.

Addressing the social stigma of widowhood.

Lina Patel

Although the play is set in the present, it deals with an ancient and ever-present taboo, the stigma that Indian women face if they survive the death of their husbands. Explains Sakhrani, “Historically and culturally, widows have always been treated very badly in India.”

Adds director Vaaz, “It dates back to the practice of suttee (or sati), where the widow basically had to jump on the funeral pyre of her husband, because her life was essentially over. That same idea has continued until today. Widows don’t wear color, just white, and they’re supposed to stay home and pray, in mourning for the rest of their lives. Their worth goes down, as persons.”

Although the practice of sati was banned in most of India in 1829, Sakhrani says there are still examples of it occurring in small villages. These days it is more of a metaphoric or figurative death, and Sakhrani’s play addresses that notion with his story.

Traditionally Indian widows can’t remarry and many spend the remainder of their lives penniless. Says Vaaz,  “The only thing they are allowed to do for a living is to beg. And then, you have to take into account it varies greatly depending on your level of income, and where you live. The widow of our play is a very privileged, upper-class woman, living in one of the most elite sections of Bombay. So a lot of the persecution that she feels is self-inflicted.”

A love letter to his grandmother.

Sakhrani says he based his play on his grandmother, who essentially gave up her life when she became a widow at a very young age, around the same age as his heroine. Although he knew her primarily from photos, he recalls that “she just stayed in white for the rest of her life and never allowed herself to enjoy anything. She was expected to behave in this way. She embraced that role of what a widow should be. Even afterwards, my aunt became a widow when she was quite young also, but she didn’t have that same stigma of wearing white all the time. She started wearing colors and keeping the company of a man around her own age and the rest of the community really looked down on the fact that they might get married. They felt a widow was not supposed to do that. If it had been a man, it would be a different thing. A man can get remarried. But a woman in that situation, no. It’s frowned upon.”

Adds Vaaz, “That’s Shane’s starting point, and then we bust that right open with this play, which is a comedy.”

The playwright deliberately created a character who is not a victim of circumstance and fate; she’s privileged and she has options. “Absolutely,” says Sakhrani. “It’s really about how she views herself. What does she have in front of her? Can she see this as an opportunity…to bring certain things into her life again, to do things that she always wanted to do, and maybe even fall in love again? Or is she just going to fall prey to what that voice in the back of her head is telling her to do? That, I think, is what lies at the heart of my play. In any cultural situation, especially with an Indian/American situation, there’s always that struggle with what your culture expects you to do and what you feel is actually right for yourself. What are the real options in front of you?”

Lina Patel and Sunil Malhotra

By setting his play in contemporary India, he is able to tackle the more entrenched prejudices and ideas. Sakhrani says that not everyone agreed with his grandmother’s strict adherence to the everlasting mourning period. “My mother thought it was crazy that her mother didn’t have a life after her husband passed. I honestly can’t find a photo of my grandmother where she’s not in white, in mourning clothes, or even where she is smiling. It’s just terrible. She drove herself into an early grave. I really believe that my grandmother was a very creative person who never got to express herself.”

So this play is a sweet love letter to your grandmother? Sakhrani smiles. “Yeah, in a way. She died when I was one year old, so it is in a way, yeah.” He laughs, and then adds, “But I’m trying to see her in a very human light, as well.”

The funny side of a social stigma.

A Widow of No Importance could be a serious drama – why make it a comedy? Sakhrani laughs, then confesses, “I’m not really very good at writing drama, that’s why. I don’t know – there’s something funny to me about self-inflicted pain, something ridiculous about it as well. I wanted to satirize that. And there’s something funny in rediscovering yourself, also, and going back almost to ‘square one’ and realizing you have to try to find your way, stumbling along – I find that amusing. Being inspired by things when, at a certain age in your life you think you know everything, and realizing that maybe you don’t. That, actually, there are better things for you out there.”

Sakhrani’s play presents a woman in the wake of a huge turning point. She has enjoyed a set path for most of her life, and then suddenly the rug is torn from beneath her. Upon becoming a widow, Deepa finds she has to make some heavy choices and decisions – she’s forced to choose her path now. Her children are grown up and in their 20s. Her son has moved out, but as her daughter is not married, she still lives at home.

Explains Vaaz, “And that’s what she focuses a lot of her energy on, getting her daughter married. She says after that’s done, she can ‘die in peace’.”

Two years after her husband’s death, we see that Deepa is starting to receive some pressure from her family and friend to move on with her life. Describes Vaaz, “It is something her daughter, who is more modern, is saying to her. She’s very clear with her mother, telling her ‘You could be sipping champagne, you could be having fun somewhere.’”

Parvesh Cheena, Anjali Bhimani and Lina Patel

The daughter, Tara, represents the voice of the future, the thoroughly modern Indian woman. Adding a wrinkle to the story, Tara is resisting an arranged marriage.

Deepa’s best friend Lalita (Anjali Bhimani) is a socialite and a matchmaker who is dying to set Deepa up with another man. Sakhrani compares her to the kind of flashy woman you might see on the Real Housewives reality TV shows. “She’s a very different type of female Indian character that you haven’t really seen on stage before.” Adds Vaaz, “But we know these aunties from Bombay. They play cards and they can drink a lot – they’re very fun ladies. They’re very wealthy and privileged and they love to bling it up!”

An emerging talent.

Sakhrani was born in Hong Kong to Indian parents and has also lived in Canada and London but, to his regret, never in India. After many years of experiencing crippling cultural confusion, he is finally comfortable describing himself as a “global Indian”.

Before turning to writing, Sakhrani practiced as a lawyer in Hong Kong. He went on to complete a Master of Fine Arts degree in Dramatic Writing (Playwriting and Screenwriting) from the University of Southern California.

He’s a finalist for the 2010-11 Kendeda Graduate Playwriting Award from the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta for his play The Doctor Is Indian. As a visiting lecturer at Hong Kong University, teaching playwriting and screenwriting, he currently divides his time between Hong Kong and Los Angeles.

His one-act plays have been performed in London, and his plays and short stories have been published in Hong Kong. He is currently working on a number of stage plays and screenplays that examine the South Asian diaspora from a comedic perspective.

Genesis of the play.

Sakhrani explains the play began as an exercise for his drama class. “That was my challenge — I wanted to write about a woman this time. There’s a lot of my family in this play, different characters from my family that have observed. And there’s some of me in there, as well.”

After he developed the idea into his thesis play for his MFA at USC, a staged reading was conducted at the university about a year ago, also directed by Vaaz. A couple of the actors who participated in that reading were then cast in this production. Recalls Vaaz, “It was just a simple staged reading. I was handed this fabulous cast. Joanne DeNott of South Coast Rep cast it brilliantly. It was a weekend of readings, so we staged it twice. We got to rehearse for about a week and a half, which was really cool.”

Sunil Malhotra and Puja Mohindra

Sakhrani adds, “That was when I did a lot of the major work on the play because I had the right actors, finally. In my MFA graduate program we never had South Asian actors available to me, for me to hear the dialogue they way I wanted to. So it really, really helped me with the writing of the play to have these readings. They understood the material. They were well-cast, so I could actually picture them in the roles, so I could write for their voice.”

USC invited several literary managers and artistic directors to those readings, and Tim Dang (artistic director of East West Players) attended. Vaaz recalls he seemed interested right away. Adds Sakhrani, “Yeah, he really liked it. Then they invited us back for another reading here, last December.” Following that reading, Dang decided to add Sakhrani’s play to the 2011 season. The production is presented by East West in association with South Asian Network (SAN) and USC School of Theatre.

It all came together fairly quickly. Vaaz agrees, “Yes, exactly. Plays can sometimes be in development forever. Shane had written a piece that was very complete. Ready, finessed and sophisticated. He did some tuning up while we were doing the reading a year ago, and obviously throughout our rehearsal process as well, but his play was very clean and ready. It got a great response from the audience right away. Just great. We’ve added 10 minutes just for the laughter.”

Adds Sakhrani, “We know where a lot of the laughs are, so it’s pretty set. It’s good to hear them laughing at my text, but I kind of remember the points where they don’t laugh,” he chuckles. “Especially when you are still in a place where you are reworking things. Instead of really enjoying it, you’re thinking about what works and what doesn’t work.” But he agrees it’s been a great process.

Approach to directing.

Director Vaaz is also an actor and educator. Her recent directing credits include Our Town, West Side Story, The Women, The Importance of Being Earnest and The Syringa Tree, all for secondary schools.  For California Institute of the Arts she recently constructed and directed pieces based on The Arabian Nights and the women of The Mahabharata and The Ramayana. Her acting credits include Homebody/Kabul and The House of Bernarda Alba for the Mark Taper Forum, East is East for Manhattan Theatre Club, Rice Boy for Yale Repertory Theatre, Twelfth Night and Caucasian Chalk Circle for LaMama ETC. She earned an MFA at Columbia University.

Shaheen Vaaz

Vaaz describes A Widow Of No Importance as a comedy that moves pretty fast. “But there are also moments that are really, really touching. We have high drama, real connection and real loss. It’s a pretty simple and realistic story, but Sakhrani has also written some moments of magic. We’ll have some fantasy sequences inspired by some of the romance novels Deepa is reading and the love she is feeling. There are moments that are almost magical realism. We also have some great moments of shtick and slapstick.”

Vaaz confesses they’re drawing on the colorful tradition of Bollywood entertainment to highlight the romance of the play. “The music we use is the soundtrack that’s in her head, from when she was younger. For the music, we’re drawing from the Bollywood catalog of existing songs. It’s almost like a mix-tape of the best of Bollywood, from 20 years ago until now. We’re using one of the hottest current pop tunes in Bombay right now, called ‘Sheila Ki Jawani.’”

There’s a disco ball hung above the stage and there will be dancing and music throughout. According to Sakhrani, “this play will appeal to people who like Bollywood movies, just in terms of the sense of humor and also the dancing and music. The mix of all those things you get in a Bollywood movie – fun, energetic, light entertainment, upbeat and also melodrama, romance.”

Vaaz hastens to add, “Of course with Bollywood also comes moments of great sorrow, great depth and sadness.”

Metaphorically speaking, when does a playwright put down his pen and decide the play is finished?

Sakhrani laughs, replying, “Probably today is the day I do that! We’re going into tech rehearsals soon so I can’t change it any more.”

A Widow Of No Importance, presented by East West Players. Opens September 14. Wed.-Sat. 8 pm; Sun. 2 pm. Through October 9. Tickets: $25-35. David Henry Hwang Theater, 120 Judge John Aiso St., Little Tokyo, LA. 213-625-7000. www.eastwestplayers.org.

***All production photos by Michael Lamont