Actors Pankaj Kapur and Supriya Pathak tell Sakshi Sharma about how their latest plays, Dopehri and Dreamz-Seher, present fresh narratives, which give a different feel to theatre. While the former emphasises more on his role’s mysteriousness, the latter shares about how she has seen her audience as her teacher
Pause and think for a moment. Is life a dream or a reality? It might seem silly initially that how can one deny the existence of the world around us but doesn’t the idea provoke you to ponder?
This tussle between the real and the imaginary pushed actor Pankaj Kapur to explore the blurry lines between the two, through his play Dreamz-Sehar. Talking about his fascination with the world, which seems vague to him, the actor says, “It is a story that came to my mind a few years ago and I transformed it into a play because it always intrigued me. We all dream, don’t we? While some people feel that there is certain reality to life, there are philosophers and saints who feel that this too is a dream and will pass.” Though Kapur says that he doesn’t want to let out the details of the play but the storyline does give a hint that the play is knitted around the blurred lines of human existence.
Kapur plays the character of a professor named Sanjay Mishra, who visits Kasauli for a long weekend. One day, on his morning walk, he encounters a mysterious woman named Sehar. She is searching for her sister Nisha who has eloped with her boyfriend. The professor gets drawn towards this “very odd character” and gets entangled into the tumultuous events, wherein Sehar calls him in the middle of the night for help. Every scene in the sequence is ominous and mysterious. After spending the night together, Sehar leaves the professor with a confusing letter reminding him of a meeting 15 years ago. The play ends on an open note and its characters are baffling as they can be interpreted in the way the audience wants to.
Explaining how theatre has shaped him as an actor and to what he is today, Kapur says, “Theatre is like a mother, which lets the child understand how to sit, stand and walk. It has taught me all the basics which I know today or pretend to know (Laughs).” He feels that he has only explored a tiny bit of himself while the major part of it still remains unexplored. He adds, “The thing is that a human being is so complex, that it takes a lifetime to explore even the smallest part.”
Since the play is written by Kapur, it’s quite evident that he understands his role better as each character is backed by the another. He says, “As the character is perceived and written by me, it has helped me to play the character in a more nuanced way. Since I am an actor, it gives me the ability to think about what mystery does my character hold and how I would portray it in front of the audience.”
Talking about his character, he says that it is a fairly straight character without much complexities, however, keeps its mysteriousness intact. “He is like anyone one of us, who comes across a situation and is so intrigued by it that he becomes a part of the situation. And just like a usual person, he too would be perplexed about what to do.”
The actor is also a part of another play, titled Dopehri, which is a dramatic presentation of a novella written by him. It revolves around an old, lonely woman, Amma Bi who sits in a gigantic laal haveli in Lucknow. The drama aims to transport the audience through Amma Bi’s journey from loneliness to self-discovery.
Talking about how he executed the play, Kapur says, “I present it as an evening where I read out the novella to my audience in the way I have perceived it. Through the central character, I have focussed on how she looks at life and what happens to her.” He adds that in Dopehri, we would discover that there is so much more to human existence than we actually think. “You realise how this 65-year-old woman goes through the journey of her life and then discovers or rediscovers herself so as to find her true identity,” he says.
In a bid to create something that is fresh and hasn’t been repeated over the time, “except for some classic adaptations,” the actor-director, in the two plays, has tried to add bits which he has observed in real life like — how he reacted to some situations. He says, “I want to give a different view and feel to it. When I did Dopehri, a lot of people wondered why novella reading has been turned into a drama but when they saw the play, they experienced theatre right from the writing to rendering to presentation.”
Talking about the interest of youth in theatres and how it has evolved over the years, the actor says that it is a great medium to connect directly with the audience. “If you have any ideas, principles ideologies, way of life, way of dressing, way of communicating, you have this platform where you can make things interesting. It is an endless medium which can satiate you as a human being or as a performing artist,” says he.
With the advent of digital media, is it losing its charm? He disagrees. “No. Not at all. It has created more avenues to showcase your talent. When I perform, I see a lot of young people coming in. The online thing is just one aspect of life. When television came, even then people thought that theatre would be lost but it survived. It’s an art form that can never die. Also, every medium has its own place, be it TV, online or live theatre. It can never be taken away by anyone, nothing can replace it,” says he.
(As part of the Delhi Theatre Festival, organised by Alchemist Live, Dopehri will be staged today at 2 pm at Siri Fort Auditorium.)
Getting on the stage
She draped the saree in Gujrati style and a large red bindi adorned her forehead, her gajra just aptly fixed on her bun. Her catchphrase, ‘Hello.. how are you? Khaana kha ke jaana,’ actor Supriya Pathak’s Hansa from Khichhdi has been ever favourite.
She has indeed come a long way from that. And today, as she plays the character of Sehar in the play Dreamz-Sehar, she talks about what attracted her the most about the character. She says, “The sensitive line between reality and imagination made my character very interesting. I get a lot of space to experiment through it. Even Pankaj (Kapur) ji used to tell me that there are different ways in which you can perform a different character and I am glad, Sehar was one.”
She says that the play has a very simple story without much drama in it, but yet is equally intriguing. “It is more interesting due to one more fact that when you come out of the character and recall the phase you have gone through, it’s fulfilling, but the very next moment you feel that yeh toh simple kahaani thi,” she adds.
The character, she says, has impacted her in such a way that for once, she wants someone else to play her role and watch it as an audience. However, as an actor, she doesn’t get to do that.
Well, the actor’s theatre journey has been a special one too. She says, “I started my acting career through theatre. As I didn’t have any schooling in acting. The only schooling I had was directly performing in front of a live audience.” However, she cherishes this phase of her life as it taught her the basics of acting. She adds, “It is an experience which nobody can take away from you. You’re immediately told whether you’re good or bad because of the live audience.” Pathak feels that getting this kind of exposure is unparalleled and overwhelming.
Talking about her evolution and journey of life, she says, “My audience has taught me whether I was good or bad. They taught me how to stand in front of them and how should I present myself.” She shares that her first teacher was her mother who had put her on the stage. And now the teacher who really worked hard with her on her skills is, she says, “my co-actor Pankaj Ji. He didn’t teach me directly but because of the way he was, I observed him and learnt through that. He made me who I am today.”
She has nailed roles like Shanta, Ganga mausi, Rambhateri, Hansa and many others. So talking about the plethora of roles she has played, she says, “Every role is a movement upward. Today, I am called Shanta in one and Sehar in the another.” She believes that they have all enriched her journey in some way or the other. “However stupid the film or however small the role is, as an actor, I have gone through a gamut of emotions which gives me an experience and allows me to take a step forward,” she adds.
Theatre still has kept its charm intact in the digital era. Supriya says that we have become more individualistic with time and digital is an addition to this. “People are seeking for activities which are collective in nature. This increases the value of plays and dramas,” she adds.
She recalls how the play has made her explore the unexplored version of herself and how deeply it touches with such simplistic storytelling. She questions “Is life a mystery or is it a dream or a reality?” and then answers it herself in a perplexed tone, “I would love to know that myself too.”