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From Karamchand to Mandola, Pankaj Kapur has come a long, illustrious way. With National Awards and a Filmfare Award punctuating a critically acclaimed career, this actor and director still wishes for more. Pratishtha Malhotra meets the man and his passionYou character in the film Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola is that of a full-blown alcoholic, but we know you to be a teetotaller. So how did you manage to pull that off?
A bit of research happens whenever you do a role; and if one has attended a lot of parties, he would have come across people who at times might have gotten completely sloshed, and seen their behaviour patterns. So that’s what I observed and recreated in my character. Of course I took the help of the director and some others who had a little more knowledge about the nuances of drinking and about what happens to an alcoholic.
So what do you prefer – directing or being directed?
Acting is my first love, so it depends on who the director is. If you have a good director who knows his job and allows you a certain kind of space and trust on your abilities to work on the part that he’s entrusted you with, then it’s a great pleasure. There could also be at times such directors who do neither respond well to your creative inputs nor share things with you; they become dictatorial in terms of how they look at things to be done, and this can be a big bore and a very uncreative process. Frankly speaking it can be very putting off, and I am fortunate that I have not had to work with such directors much. There are whole lot of people who give it their best, and that’s what makes a given film great. So interaction between the actor and the director is the most important thing to happen for the film and the character to become alive. I love direction as well by the way.
As an actor, what do you look for in a film when you sign it?
It is the script, the story, the character that has been offered to me and who is going to direct it. But the most important things for me are the story and the character. There could be a brilliant director but if I have no part in the film I may still not do it. But if there is a part with which I think I can do something and the director and I are on the same page, then it doesn’t matter that he may be a first-time director. But if there is a director who understands and trusts you (somebody like Vishal Bhardwaj with whom this is my third film) there’s a comfort level and there is a certain level of maturity that you expect – you don’t have to explain to him as to why are you doing this and he doesn’t have to explain to you what he wants vis-à-vis his subject. That, of course, is a great situation to be in.
Theatre is something that has always been close to your heart. How do you feel about the current scenario of theatre in India?
I think what is good is that the actors as well as others involved in theatre can make a living through it today. I passed out of National School of Drama when I was 22 in 1976. I was a young boy and at that time there was no way one could survive solely on theatre. So therefore we had to look for films, television and other media. But in today’s time it is possible to survive and do well in theatre if you’re able to create a niche for yourself. That’s a very fortunate thing.
The unfortunate thing is that there are no writers. Even in films we have this huge problem – this film is adopted from Hollywood, this from a Tamil film, from this and that film – originality is not there. Similarly in play writing there are hardly any plays being written. Thus after a point it becomes very boring to have same adaptations, same translations, same plays which have been done millions of time to be done again. As a youngster, a young actor or a young director it is a good exercise, but what about the audiences? How many times would you want to see the same play? So why aren’t new plays being written? Reason: there is no money. In television writing, you write trash like “Acha Pappu tum theek ho” and earn thousands of rupees. That’s not the kind of money that you can ever imagine in theatre. Therefore people are not encouraged to do it and it has not acquired the status of a profession. We have had people like Mohan Rakesh and Vijay Tendulkar who contributed hugely to modern Indian theatre. Their plays are still being enacted. So if you can have playwrights of that calibre today there is no reason why the theatre will not become richer in terms of content and money. Today a person is ready to buy a ticket of 300-400 bucks to go see a good performance at a play.
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