Comfortable and Competent ft. Prerna Chawla

"If you're a competent, amiable actor and you work well in a group, you have repeat value." Prerna Chawla speaks to us on what it takes to be a jobbing actor today, on the favourite roles in her repertoire, and on the merits of laugh-out-loud theatre.

You've done a lot of plays in the last 15-odd years. But you don't rely on theatre for your income, right? How does that track?

You have to always have a side hustle. It's impossible in India, unless you're doing extremely commercial theatre, to be able to run your household from it. It is not possible.

We still get paid anywhere between a thousand to three thousand rupees per show. And no matter how many of those you do, it's not going to cut it in a city like Bombay.

And how did it work in the early years?

With Karan Pandit at a rehearsal of The Interview

When I first started with Akvarious in 2008, I used to have a job with a training company. But very quickly, because Akarsh was doing new stuff, I was in everything.

So, I quit my job, became a freelancer, and started to prioritise theatre. But I was in my mid-twenties. In hindsight, it may not have been the wisest decision.

Even now, you have to constantly look for new hustles because till the beginning of this year, voicing was paying my bills comfortably. But suddenly at the beginning of this year, I saw a massive decline; I cannot say that I've made enough money from voicing this year to have even supported myself for one month.

I don't know if it's AI. I don't know if my voice has lost its edge. I don't know what it is. But I've had to go back to corporate training.

Was Akvarious your first theatre work?

No, no. It really started in school college. I used to be sent for workshops in the summer to just get me out of the house and things like that.

I had an immense interest till about class seven or eight. Then I got too cool for school. And then essentially, I did theatre in the 11th and 12th after a big gap. To bunk classes more than anything else.

LSR in Delhi, is actually where my theatre journey started to build. I studied English literature. In my second year, I had a senior bully me into being part of the one act competitive plays.

I won best actress everywhere. And I stood for dramatic society election. I was President of DRAMSOC at LSR in third year.

We did a public production with Feisal Alkazi. I think that may have been my first professional play.

Then I used to be part of the theatre group in Delhi called Teamwork Productions. So, I mean, I've always kind of been in and out of the theatre.

And what brought you to Bombay?

I came to Bombay in June or July of 2003 on an open ticket just to be by the seaside and recoup after a very bad year, personally.

And that week turned out to be amazing.

I was staying with family. One day my uncle said, “Hey, I just bumped into Ahlam Khan at Fab India.” (My uncle's mother and Ahlam's mother were at the same kitty party.) “We got chatting and they're rehearsing a new play. So I told them you do theatre in college and that you're here for a holiday. Can you go watch their rehearsal?”

I landed in Bombay on a Tuesday. The next Tuesday, I was watching their rehearsal. By the end of that rehearsal, they had already double cast me in a play.

And well, 22 years later, we're still there.

Which play was this with Ahlam?

It was called Cast Party. Pooja Asher directed it along with Ahlam. They had also co-written it. And that's when I met Dilshad and Anand and all of these guys and those associations are all still quite strong. Digvijay, Shivani Vakil.

With sister Preetika Chawla at an immersive, promenade performance in Delhi

One of the things I've always admired about you and - your sister - is this immense capacity for a social life...

I feel like that's an occupational hazard in the theatre, especially if you're doing so much of it with multiple groups. It requires you to say yes, and also say no.

It requires healthy arguments, because that's how you build long relationships. Just agreeing and saying yes is short term superficial relationship.

And I feel like we've both (Preetika and I) managed very long and healthy relationships with ups and downs with most people that we are social with.

But do you ever do you ever look back and think that if you hadn't put yourself out there, and if you weren’t ‘outgoing’, as an individual, you may not have had that kind of opportunity. I'm asking because a lot of people feel that if you build it, they will come. There's a lot of waiting around for work, especially in your 20s.

I don't know how it would have been if I was not an outgoing person. It was a bit of luck. It fell into my lap. And that play got me other plays.

Because the thing about theatre was that everybody watched each other's work a lot. It's still true. So, I became the new kid on the block at the time.

And I was competent. I will not say that I was an excellent actor. There are of course some plays, some roles I’m prouder of than others. And if I may say so, mine is a comfortable presence. And an efficient and competent performance.

Sometimes those are easier choices in the theatre, where you'd rather have a group of people who get on with each other, instead of having one sort of extremely talented, but may not work well in a group. Maybe my being outgoing helped in that way?

I guess overall it wasn’t something that I struggled with.

I struggled with other media. I still haven't gotten a breakthrough on camera work where so many of my peers have.

But in the theatre, fortunately, it's never been a struggle. In fact, I am very, very fortunate that I've been spoilt for choice. Even now, I work with Rage, Motley, Akvarious quite regularly.

So which would you say people would value more – competence or personality? Not to put it that binary, but you know what I mean…

With Abhishek Saha in a performance of Pantomime Cat

Both! If you're a competent, amiable actor and you work well in a group, you have repeat value.

I remember saying the phrase, “I'm a director's actor” a lot. I'm good at seeing what somebody wants me to do through without losing the essence of myself and finding some amount of truth in it instead of only following instructions.

And striking that balance also requires a certain kind of people skill. You can't go out there and be like, “I'm not going to do this the way you want me to do it. And what I do is exactly what you're going to get.”

It's a discussion. You know, like theatre is a democratic process. Yeah.

Ultimately, I – and a lot of my peers and colleagues - do theatre because we're getting friends. We're getting experiences and good food. And if we make it an unpleasant experience, then it's really not worth it.

So, you said earlier that you haven't had a similar kind of success with camera work, right? How do you reconcile with that kind of disappointment?

I did have a brief stint with television, but in six months I was out of there. I couldn't do it. And I was very young, 21. It was just too not in line with my straight-out-of-a-women's-liberated-college-kind-of-opinion. It was too far removed from my idealistic nature at the time.

And by the time I actually came around to wanting to audition for things, I think a lot of the investments had already happened. I was always slightly behind the curve and I continue to be.

But to answer your question properly. It can get disappointing. Because you audition and then you're waiting to be told. Often, you'll get the call back.

Often, you'll discuss money, you'll discuss dates and then people will get back to you saying that the channel went with an influencer or that the channel went with a face or a name, which generally doesn't make much sense to me.

I can't say that there wasn’t a time when I wasn't disappointed. You feel the pinch. You feel the “Why not me? What's wrong with me? What am I doing wrong? Are people just humouring me and letting me do so much theatre? Am I not as competent as I think I am or as they are leading me to believe?” But I guess eventually you get over it. It's not to say that I don't want it even now.

But I can't say that I feel the same kind of debilitating disappointment that I used to.

Having worked on so many plays in English and in Hindi, and a lot of them original, where do you think playwriting in India is headed? Have you seen a shift in attitudes or quality or reception in the last 20 years?

I do think that within the theatre context, Indian writing, contemporary writing has evolved to a large degree. And I have been so lucky to be a part of a lot of it.

That’s one of the things that Akvarious have been the pioneers and flag bearers of. They do a lot of original writing.

And I don't know if it came from copyright issues. I don't know if it came from the fact that plays weren't as accessible to a younger audience.

But I do think that their writing has cultivated a whole generation of audiences that would actually never think of going and watching a play.

Like The Interview. Sometimes. This Time.

All of these make the theatre going experience so laugh out loud and so fun. And there is always some subliminal messaging.

If I can go to watch a play and not think about all the modern-day stresses because it’s a fun play. And then I leave thinking about some issues that was brought up. But while watching I've only had fun.

I think there is something to be said of that approach because it seems like fewer and fewer people have the bandwidth to go and watch something heavy and thought provoking, however well-made and relevant it may be. I don’t mind, but I’m already a theatre convert.

Take Dekh Behen. For 60-70 minutes I'm just in a room full of girls who are enjoying themselves. Both on stage and off.

There’s lots of issues being addressed very organically and without preaching. All the way till the last five minutes.

And that’s when the Akvarious style of addressing or approaching tragedies through a comic lens makes it even more accessible to me. I am not uncomfortable, not necessarily weeping my eyes out but I'm thinking about the message for days.

So, yes. I do think that writing within the theatre has evolved a lot. And I do think that Akarsh Khurana has a massive, massive role to play in that. Super.

Do you have a favourite or top three favourite roles that you've essayed?

With Geetika Tyagi and Gopal Datt, before a performance of Ok Tata Bye Bye in Jaipur

I would say without a doubt my top would be Ok Tata Bye Bye for myself.

One, the character was outstanding on paper. It was just too good. And, slight digression, I didn't quite understand it the first time. I wasn’t supposed to play that part.

At the first reading Purva Naresh, the playwright-director, suddenly said “Listen this other actor who was supposed to read the part can't read on the spot in Hindi. So, sorry. You don’t read the protagonist. You read the other character.”

But Purva has this great way of writing without punctuation and a hundred ellipses. So, I couldn't actually find any emotion at that reading. I was just trying to make sense of the lines while reading. After that reading Shernaz Patel walked up to me and said “Whenever they're casting for this, you need to get into that room”.

And the other reason I think that it was my top performance for me and especially at that time was because nobody expected it off of me. Nobody was going to cast me in a role like that.

I've always had the reputation of a very urban, English-speaking theatre person and the character was not just Hindi-speaking it was a rural dialect. Thank God Gopal Datt had a soft spot for me because I arm-twisted my way into the play.

Everybody thought it was bad casting until that play opened.

To this day, I have not received so much love for a character that I have played.

I also love the part I play in 12 Angry Jurors which Nadir Khan directed. Again because it's so far removed from me as a person. I had a hard time getting into it. But what I actually really enjoy the most about playing that character is that when the show is done, I’m usually out of costume first. And inevitable there are members of the audience who say “We’re here to meet the actors.” It tickles me no end. I always take it as such a big compliment because these people saw me five minutes ago and now they don’t recognise me out of costume.

Side hustle with a broken foot

The third one is my most recent role. Or roles, actually. In It’s a Wonderful Life, I play three or four characters that are distinct from each other. I'm enjoying it so much! To the point that in my enthusiasm to meet a music cue, I've tumbled down the stairs and broken my foot.

Do you miss this kind of approbation and validation as a director, in Dekh Behen 1 and Dekh Behen 2?

More than actors people ask for the writers. Inevitably everybody is generous enough to point out Shikha and me as the ones who directed it. The general assumption is that Akarsh directed it because it is an Akvarious play and because both of us are on stage so people always expect an external director.

Having said all that, the truth of the matter is that after Dekh Behen and Dekh Behen 2 people are basically just looking for Tahira Nath Krishnan. They are not looking for anybody else.

Tell us more about Excess Estrogen. A bunch of you have written your own pieces, yes?

Yes! When we did Bayan many years ago, which was another evening of shorts by women, Akarsh actually gave us the pieces. This time he encouraged us to try and write, with the safety net that he'll find pieces if we couldn’t.

My thought process started with me wanting to write about navigating single life in your 40s in a city like Bombay. That led me to thinking about sexual humiliation that I might have been through. And eventually, I landed on the ‘topic’ of my excess oestrogen condition, which is adenomyosis.

So, in a sentence, my piece starts as an exploration of what exactly excess oestrogen can do to your body. And you’ll have to watch the play for the rest.

Shikha Talsania, whom I co-direct Dekh Behen 1 and 2 with, wrote her own piece about nostalgia and girlhood; about missing her girls in adulthood and missing that time of innocence in her life. Tahira wrote a piece about mothers and daughters and it's called The Apple Falls. It's literally like how far does the apple fall from the tree.

And is there a thread that runs through the pieces in Excess Estrogen?

The thread is basically that it’s an evening of stories of women, for women, by women. It tries to capture the diversity of what women think of important themes like independence, feminism, our bodies, our memories. There was one piece which Lisha Bajaj has written, which appears at the end of Excess Estrogen, which basically turns feminism on its head as a set of prescribed tenets one should follow if one is a feminist, or is to be accepted as a feminist. It says it's my feminism, my freedom, my independence. What I want to embrace from the list of prescribed things that make me a feminist, a woman, a person is my choice.

Changing track slightly for a bit. With all the corporate training and voice work you do, you meet a lot of non-arts people. Even socially, you meet a lot of non-arts people. What is the general perception of theatre in the in those worlds?

That's a good question. I think there's generally a bit of admiration especially from people who have slightly ‘boring’ jobs.

I had a very corporate, investment-banker boyfriend, and I ended up keeping all his friends in alimony when we broke up. But all those guys, at least outwardly, seem to express a lot of admiration in the bravery of having made this choice. And lots of people keep calling it a brave choice.

I don't know if I agree with that, because I think that it may be a lazy choice from my standpoint, because it's what keeps falling into my lap.

But I think that there's a good balance. I think it's easy for the more straight-laced, square-job people to have a little bit of enjoyment in their life by keeping ‘creative’ people sprinkled in it. And the other way around, it's nice to have the perspective of a mundane work life and constantly appreciate the choices that I have made, because I don't know if I could conform to that kind of life. I think I would be bored in a minute.

Do you have any words of wisdom or advice for young people trying to make it in either the theatre or actually, specifically, perhaps the voice over industry? Because these are both roads that you've taken.

 

Find a side hustle. The voice industry used to be my side hustle. I don't know what's happening with it. But find a stable side hustle that will pay your bills and that will not be threatened as much by technology. I think that is of utmost importance.

I mean, economic instability is very frustrating. And it leads to a lot of emotional instability as well; bad choices and poor decisions and all that.

And finally, what is your wish for Akvarious for the next 25 years?

Safe spaces

Oh my God, just keep doing more of what we're doing. The fact that Akarsh has been able to build this safe space and this safe environment where people keep coming back... I have not seen actors returning to a rehearsal room as much as I have seen it over 25 years of Akvarious. People will go live their own lives, but they'll come back.

And the number of audiences that Akvarious has single-handedly cultivated, who come up to all of us and say, "This is the first play I'm watching and now I will be watching a lot of plays" is so heartening and so warming that I think we must have done something right. So, keep creating the new writing, keep the theatre alive!