M1 Fringe Festival: Haresh Sharma’s Eclipse finds new relevance in today’s divisive world

SINGAPORE – Restaging a 2008 play about the aftermath of the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan is timelier than ever for playwright Haresh Sharma, 59, who thinks “the whole world is like a big partition” today.

“People in power are separating us from one another using faith, history, geography and whatever they can get their hands on,” says the Cultural Medallion recipient, referring to contemporary religious fundamentalist movements.

Eclipse, Sharma’s monologue about a young Singaporean man journeying to his father’s birthplace in Pakistan, was first staged as a 20-minute play in Edinburgh in 2007, along with three other shows that dealt with histories of independence.

The play, which was developed into a full-length monologue at the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival in 2008, is

being restaged at the festival from Jan 15 to 18

. It joins other plays such as Bangalore-based theatre collective Qabila’s WePushTheSky in a season that tells stories about displacement and dislocation.

Inspired by an offhand anecdote shared by Sharma’s otherwise reticent father – that the playwright’s grandfather had worked in a textile shop in Japan during the 1920s – Sharma dreamt up a play about three generations of men as they deal with a turbulent history of migration.

Eclipse’s first iteration was played by Glaswegian actor Umar Ahmed – in a Scottish accent, which might have been jarring for audiences in 2008. This time, however, Sharma thinks the script has landed “the best person to play this at this moment in time in Singapore”.

Singaporean actor Shrey Bhargava, who was born in Lucknow, India, and whose family came to Singapore when he was one, was not directly affected by the partition. But he says that growing up with Bollywood, cricket and the news naturally steeped him in that troubled history.

“I grew up in a time when the Kargil War was happening. I was four years old, and I would watch it like it was my favourite thing to watch,” says the 29-year-old.

In 1947, Britain – which had colonised the Indian subcontinent for about 89 years – divided the territory into a mainly Hindu India and a mainly Muslim Pakistan. The partition displaced more than 10 million people, with some estimating a death toll of two million from the violence that ensued.

Sharma thinks Bhargava can play grandfather, father and son well because of his fluency with cultural specificities. When Sharma admits that he knows nothing about cricket, Bhargava quickly offers: “We have to sit down one day. Today, there’s a very big match between India and Australia.”

Bhargava says his whole acting career in 2024 has been “leading up to this experience”. He acted in

Singapore Repertory Theatre’s Disgraced

,

HuM Theatre’s Train To Pakistan

and

The Prose And The Passion

, which was his first collaboration with Sharma.

Bhargava is hoping to draw from uncles and relatives in playing the different roles, but caveats that each character is an amalgamation of reality and fantasy.

His biggest challenge in his first monologue is stamina. “From start to finish, all attention has to be on me. You feel so responsible for the experience the audience is having – so the pressure is high and the stakes are high.”

He also feels added pressure as someone who grew up studying Sharma’s plays.

Eclipse is directed by The Necessary Stage’s associate artist A Yagnya. Bhargava will be accompanied onstage by Indian classical vocalist Sveta Kilpady.

Of the play’s significance, Bhargava says: “This community in Singapore doesn’t really have its stories told often, we’re sort of a minority within a minority. To have that story of the partition told from a Singaporean point of view – so specific – it’s a privilege to represent it.

“I want to do that justice. I don’t want to screw that up.”

Book It/Eclipse

Where: Practice Space, The Theatre Practice, 54 Waterloo Street
When: Jan 15 to 17, 8pm; Jan 18, 5 and 8pm
Admission: $38
Info:

www.necessary.org/main-season/eclipse