Quasar Thakore Padamsee’s play draws parallels between El Salvador civil war of the ’80s and India now | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Quasar Thakore Padamsee’s play draws parallels between El Salvador civil war of the ’80s and India now | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Written by Parth Khatau |Updated: September 25, 2019 9:11:02 am

Quasar Thakore Padamsee’s play draws parallels between El Salvador civil war of the ’80s and India now

Despite addressing serious issues, the play has elements of comedy. Predominantly in English, the 80-minute production also has dialogues in Spanish. “

A scene from A Peasant of El Salvador

In 1981, civil war ravaging Central America was at its brutal worst in El Salvador. Fought by left-wing coalition groups against the military run nation’s government, the 13-year-long war claimed the lives of close to 75,000 Salvadorians. One of them was a farmer in the countryside named Jesus. His story was documented by scriptwriters and circus clowns Peter Gould and Stephen Stearns in 1981. While the two performed the skit, their dream to turn it into a large-scale production was to take another 30 years — till Indian stage actor and theatre director Quasar Thakore Padamsee found the script gathering dust in a second-hand book store in Toronto in 2007. Immediately drawn to the story, he bought the script, hoping to turn it into a play. In 2013, the idea came to fruition in the form of A Peasant of El Salvador. “The script was with me for almost five years. I used it as research for other plays and pitched it to many directors to use, but nobody thought a story on El Salvador would appeal to Indian audiences. Finally, I decided to work on it,” says Padamsee, 48.