Ratna Pathak Shah: The job of the actor is to communicate what the playwright wants

Ratna Pathak Shah has quite a few flawless performances in a career spanning four decades, to her name. The actress was in the Capital to perform a play on the life of the revolutionary feminist writer Ismat Chughtai. She stated, “Most actors start off fairly awkward on stage. It takes most actors a long time to figure out how to know what to do.”


The actress said, “Each actor has his or her own process, but I think the discoveries are fairly similar — How do you make a scene work, how do you make conversation sound like a conversation, and not [a] dialogue, how do you make relationship interesting and therefore understandable to the audience. And if they are helped along [the way] by teachers or good directors, so much the better. I was among the lucky ones, I was helped.”


Talking about the capital she said, “Delhi hasn’t been very inviting for the last few years, for some reason (laughs). But I think it still has an audience that is interested in theatre. Hopefully, this is only the beginning of a happy relationship again with Delhi, and Gurgaon now.”


Talking about the character in the play the actress said, “She’s (Chughtai) is interested in human beings, the man-woman relationship, and is not looking at it with rose-coloured spectacles. She’s not a Bollywood film storyteller, who is telling the same story over and over again, just changing costumes. There were many wonderful discoveries and excitements while doing this play.”


The actress said, “I read the script a lot. And usually, the script sort of reveals itself as you read. It’s a bit like a detective piecing together a story. Similarly, you piece together a character, use your own personal experiences, what you’ve seen other actors do. All kinds of influences operate on you as you try and find your own voice. The job of the actor is to communicate what the playwright wants—putting on weight, cutting hair, growing mooch [beard], whatever [it may take].”


Talking about how Hindi films have struggled with the idea of gender, she said, “We have a long way to go. Our society has a long way to go. We are not able to see the problem. So many people say ‘Arey yeh ab nahin hota’, yeh sab kya purani baatein karte rehte ho, ‘Arey these women are becoming bra-burning feminists’, or ‘Ok, so you hate men, haan?’ This kind of puerile conversation is still going on. It was happening when I was in college. I’m astounded and so depressed.”


She concluded by saying, “But at the same time, so many things are changing, [with] so many women around us in every field. What happened with Frances McDormand? (The actor, in a rousing display of comradeship with her fellow female actors, asked every female actor who had been nominated, to stand up, as part of her acceptance speech for her Best Actress Oscar) She made a point. It’s true we are around. [The change] It’ll take time, but I never lose hope.”