Fifteen boys and four girls take their positions in two neat rows. Ready for the director's cue. Eagerness writ large on their faces, as if this is `the' performance -- and not another Sunday afternoon rehearsal session. All because of Saurabh Shukla, it seems -- the man who created Satya, and played "Kallu Mama" with effortless ease. Shukla is back to where his creative journey began -- as a playwright -- in Delhi 15 years ago. The play he's directing and still writing is Kaal and his motivation seems to be at its peak. From conversations with the actors after every other shot. To a list of dos and don'ts. Even every nuance of the situation is thrashed threadbare.

The scene is some kind of a soliloquy -- the hero seems to be in a dark moment of introspection -- scared and tense, jolted out of his reverie when his childhood sweetheartbreaks in. This isn't exactly what the director wanted. So a long `conversation' follows about depression, insecurity and the evil in all of us. An unintentional break follows after the conversation. The hero and the heroine can't seem to connect. "Perfect the scene between yourselves. Change the lines if necessary. There's no need to say what's written."

"I don't think I'd finish writing the play till a week before the performance. I had a couple of trial performances of the play at Prithvi about a year ago, but it didn't seem to work. I didn't have the time to develop it then. So it remained incomplete. Now I've taken it up as a workshop -- adding and eliminating in course of almost every rehearsal." A take-off on Anton Chekhov's short story The Duel, Kaal is a musical -- the score composed by one of the members of the group, Sanvedana. But that's not all. "It is about hate that love arouses. A boy is in love with a girl. He is the archetypal coward. He can't assert his desire. While he wallows inconfusion and self pity, another man comes to the girl's life. Infuriated, he calls for a duel with the other man. Later, the play transcends the situation to talk about the subtle ironies of human experience."

He then gets up and starts to work on the music. The score is powerful and the musicians, with their dholak and harmonium, are waiting for Shukla to fine tune the choir's notes. He becomes one of them -- singing and swaying, mocking and challenging the hero. "It's often difficult to juggle both cinema and theatre. Specially when you're involved in a play like this. These guys are young and relatively unexposed. They are rigid in the way they think because of no fault of theirs. What interested me was the prospect of opening them up to all kinds of possibilities and situations."

The couple returns and the cry of "Silence!" snaps everyone back to attention. They take the stage, while the director shuts his eyes and listens. He stops them, suddenly. "The sense of familiarity is missing. You have grownup with each other. You are in love with her. Look into her eyes like nobody understands her better than you do." While the unit gets ready for another scene, he talks about his return to theatre.

"This is not to prove that I'm back in theatre. It was a story which appeals to the kind of person I am -- made all the more challenging because after writing for cinema, I'm back to where the word is the most crucial. Cinematography added to the success of Satya. Here I don't even have a set. Just 30 people talking and acting."

Does that mean cinema is out for the moment? "Not at all. I love both -- anything supported by visuals." In fact, Shukla has just completed the screenplay for a Rohan Sippy film with Abhishek Bachchan and Karisma Kapoor. A couple of others too, apart from a play he will write and act in. As for now, Kaal is what he's writing, directing and breathing.

`Kaal' at the Experimental Theatre, NCPA. On Oct 16. Time: 7.00 pm.On Oct 17. Time: 6.30 pm.