Theatre is the mother of all art forms and language has nothing to do with good performance,” says the veteran Bollywood actor Om Puri.
This veteran actor needs no introduction. The actor has done wide range of movies, be it art cinema, commercial or movies of west. Puri in his 30 years of career has given prolific performances till now.
Recently, the actor is in Bhopal to conduct a workshop at Madhya Pradesh School of Drama (MPSD). Talking with The Pioneer, the actor talked about changing trends in Indian cinema and the role of theatre in an actor’s life.
The actor belongs from a theatre background and strongly believes that theatre is the mother of all art forms. “As Sanskrit is the mother of all languages, similarly theatre is the mother of all art forms,” says Puri. Elaborating further he said, “Theatre and Cinema though differ a lot but they have many similarities as well. I would say that all the things like music, sound, lighting, dialogues, and other necessities dealing with the production part came from theatres. The big difference you can say between both of them is the ‘camera’, the actor added. “On the other hand dealing with the atmosphere, presentation and above all concentration is much important.”
The Padma Shri awardee says that he will share his experiences with the young theatre actors. “Ye vidya kathin hai aur main yahan apne anubhav se in bachcho ko sikhane aaya hoon”, said Puri.
Moreover, he also advised the young theatre artists, not to take theatre as a full time job. “This profession called ‘theatres’ is somehow a difficult profession. The reason behind it is that in this profession one cannot earn money because there is no money. I would suggest the youngsters to practice another profession while doing theatres too.”
While quoting about theatre and film industry, Puri said, “Earlier, nobody knew NSD but now every second person in film industry belongs to NSD. So doing theatre, it has become easy for the upcoming actors to enter the industry. They face very less struggle.”
About his comeback in theatres, he says, “For my personal satisfaction, I may do theatres apart from movies.”
Puri, who is counted among the most versatile actors of the industry believes that art cinema has not diminished to the fullest in today’s time and good movies are made even now. “Earlier too, not too many movies were made you can count them on fingers and even now, it is the same condition with art cinema. Even now, there are directors and actors who make good movies.”
Commenting over the film industry, he says, “No doubt the movies have improvised in terms of techniques but the sad part is that there no storytelling ‘the good one’ for that matter. Directors should come up with good stories.”
He signed off saying, “I do not blame the audience as their purpose is entertainment. It is the director’s job to show them some good stuff.”