Theatre actor, director, and producer Atul Kumar has one love - theatre. Kumar’s affair with theatre began in school, when as a 12-year-old was asked to fill in for a sick student. “The director gave me the role saying I don’t have to do much except cry since the character had been convicted and was about to be hung,” recalls 50-year-old Kumar who won ‘Best New Face’ award for the play. This got him recognition in school, which appealed to him so much that he continued to take part in plays every year. It soon turned into a passion and he joined director and writer K Madhavan’s repertory ‘Chingari’.

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“After school, I would take a bus and go for rehearsals, which would go on till late. Then I would take the bus and come home with my mother wondering what I was doing,” says Kumar with regret for troubling his mother, a single parent who wanted him to have a ‘proper job’ or join the family business.

However, Kumar had other plans. While working with Chingari, he was introduced to French literature, drama and cinema which fascinated him. Around this time, he also saw a performance by French puppeteer Philippe Genty at a festival to celebrate 200 years of the French Revolution. This had such an effect on Kumar that he studied French at the graduation level at Jawaharlal Nehru University and soon moved to Paris on a scholarship to learn from Genty.

Kumar was also deeply moved by a performance by Kavalam Panicker, and moved to Kerala to learn Kathakali and Kalaripayattu. He was full of enthusiasm and wanted to do more and more plays, but most people in Chingari had day jobs. So Kumar left to start his own theatre company - The Company Theatre in 1993 when he was around 25-year-old. Money was limited but work was in abundance, says Kumar, who didn’t mind it since he was living with family.

During a visit to Mumbai to perform one of his plays, he landed a small project which did about 50 shows. This was in contrast to Delhi where productions sometimes had to be wrapped up in 2-3 shows. Kumar chose to stay back in Mumbai, churning out one production after another - around 30 until now including The Flying Doctor (1999), The Blue Mug (2002), The Con Artist (2005), Trivial Disasters (2014). But none was received as warmly as Piya Behrupiya, a musical adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, which won the META Award in 2014. The play opened at the World Shakespeare Festival at the Globe Theatre in London in 2012, has been translated into seven-eight languages and performed in the US, UK, Canada, France, Serbia, China, and South Korea besides its home-country where it had its 200th show last weekend. “I was commissioned to do a translation of Shakespeare’s play. But when it went on the floor, we realised that it would be much more interesting if we let it breathe. So, we rewrote it. The key was to let the actors on stage improvise and Amitosh (Nagpal, who adapted the play) write it from the improvisation,” says Kumar who spent about three months rehearsing. The success of Piya Behrupiya has been a huge deal for the director. Last year, Piya Behrupiya came on Netflix and although Kumar doesn’t believe theatre can be experienced on the small screen, he admits being paid a huge amount, more than they have got from anywhere else, which he says benefitted all involved.

Also in 2012, Kumar realised his long-cherished dream of having a theatre residency in India. “It had been on my mind for about 15 years. I wanted a place where people across the world could come and collaborate and rehearse, a creative space like a laboratory. We finally raised money through donations and set up our residency in Kamshet near Pune. Here, we charge a small fee to take care of expenses. People have started coming… sometimes it’s only one person and at times a group of about 100 people,” says Kumar who has had rave reviews for his play Detective 9-2-11, a noir-comedy that opened this year’s Aadyam festival.

Asked what’s next Kumar speaks of another project. “I am producing and acting in a play based on George Orwell’s 1984 directed by a British director John Britton.”

Life certainly is all about theatre for Kumar!

BOX: Kumar on #metoo movement

Across the world, in every field, there are women who have been harassed. Since the movement has started in India and is in our face right now, it is a great space for women and men alike. Amidst anger, self-doubt, self-introspection, and fear, some new doors are opening and some fabulous change will happen, I am very sure of it. I am reflecting on myself, if I have said or done something that made someone uneasy, if as a director I made a comment at someone’s body or dress which might have had a sexual connotation which I didn’t realise while cracking a joke but crossed the line making the other person uncomfortable but they couldn’t speak up because I am the director or producer and it is not a fairground. We never thought about it in such terms earlier, but this movement has made all of us self-introspect.