I enjoy watching movies more than theatre: Atul Kumar

For Atul Kumar, the process of exploring new ways of doing theatre never stops. That allows him, in his words, “to constantly question myself and what I have settled into.” “You have to be ready to fail and I have been doing that since day one. I wouldn’t be able to do theatre if I was settled into one way of thinking or working,” says the man who acted in plays such as C for Clown, Hamlet — the Clown Prince and directed plays such as Noises Off and Piya Behroopiya, a musical retelling of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. With his latest production Khwaab Sa, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he has again explored something new in the form of contemporary dance theatre. Here, Atul speaks about his fascination with the Bard’s works, exploring new forms and acting in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Rangoon:

How did you think of adapting Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the stage as Khwaab Sa? 

I have been attracted to the fairytale quality of the play since I was much younger and I wanted to adapt it. But the way I was visualising it, I knew it was going to be a very expensive production, So I didn’t dare get into it, till a company from Taiwan came forward and produced it.

With this play, you have delved into the world of contemporary dance theatre. Why did you choose this form? 

Actually, it was content driven. There is a track in the play of lovers, a strong image of them running in the forest after each other, then getting confused about who they are in love with, but constantly running. That image has stayed with me. At the same time, I have for some time, been wanting to work with pure contemporary dance, and a create piece with dancers, not actors and explore body and gesture etc. These two things became a trigger for me to find a collaborator in contemporary dance who could re-imagine these lovers as dancers. I found that person in Diya Naidu, an absolutely fantastic choreographer from Bangalore. With her help, we went all over India and found dancers. Then, of course based on that, the music became contemporary and the design became experimental.

In some of your earlier interviews, you have mentioned that the reason you adapted Shakespeare’s plays was because you were terrified of him in your school days, and this is your way of trying to understand him. How much have you understood? 

Very, very little, I must say. The man was monumental. There is such a vast canvas he draws that you can keep approaching his work from different angles and different forms. Also, they change as you grow. The way I read and understood Hamlet when I was 30 is very different from how I read it when I was 15. That’s because when you’re growing, your own life gets reflected in his work. The way you look at his work keeps changing. It also depends on which culture you belong to and that’s why it has value for people from north to south, east to west. I travel somewhere in Europe or Japan and I will see another production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which will blow me away, yet again and again. That just goes to show that there are so many layers to the man’s work — you can only unravel a little bit in this lifetime.

You don’t do as many Hindi movies as your contemporaries in theatre, like Kumud Mishra, do...

I just get very bored waiting for a film to be conceived, shot, edited, post production, publicity, finding a release. It’s just too tedious. I don’t think I am made for that kind of patience. Having said that, I’m a film buff. I enjoy watching movies more than watching theatre, even my own. No form of theatre can match that adrenaline and connect that world cinema offers. But making it, nahi hota hai. Performing live in front of people is another high.

We did catch a glimpse of you in the trailers of Rangoon...

Well, there are some friends around me who are also filmmakers and they manage to sometimes convince me. Whatever little I do, it’s mostly because of the people involved. When I did Talvar with Meghna Gulzar, I did it because it’s wonderful spending time with her. Vishal, too, is a sea of kindness. He is extremely kind with his entire team. There is a positivity on the sets and I enjoyed each and every day of the shooting. I was not bored, even though I used to wait for stuff to happen, I was fully charged. It doesn’t matter to me whether the film is a hit or a flop, but I think the process was very exciting and the people were lovely.

You make plays based on Shakespeare’s plays and Vishal adapts his plays for cinema. What do you think of his take on the bard’s works? 

First of all, it is quite amazing that somebody is making films on Shakespeare’s works in India. We don’t have much of that to begin with. Everybody knows that Maqbool was probably his most successful connect with Shakespeare, followed by Omkara and Haider. I really feel he has a very sharp eye for details. He manages to pick up very fine things and then adapts it wonderfully to his cinema. For instance, in Hamlet, there is a scene where Hamlet meets his father’s ghost and the ghost tells Hamlet, that his uncle killed him and that he should seek revenge. Then the ghost keeps appearing and disappearing and keeps telling Hamlet to follow him. You can interpret this ‘follow me’ in different ways. It’s wonderful how it’s inconsequential, but Vishal manages to catch on to that. There is this wonderful scene in Haider where Irrfan, who’s playing the ghost appears on the bridge and looks at Haider, and makes a gesture to him, which is like ‘follow me’. When I saw that, I thought how beautifully he’s brought that out in a cinematic way. How many people have that connect with the script to cinematic language? He does many things like that. He picks up wonderful things from Shakespeare’s plays and layers them like this.

Watch Piya Behroopiya at Rangsharda Auditorium today at 7.30 pm.