Carrying on... with Joy!
ANUJ KUMAR
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Theatre actor Joy Sengupta on the changing trends in the medium and his preferences.
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RICH HERITAGE The stage came alive at Virasat in Dehra Dun
On stage, watching him flow through characters is joy, sheer joy. And he doesn't compromise on its purity. "Acting is the motivation of my life and stage is the only actor's medium," says Joy Sengupta. Known for his performances as an aspiring dancer in Mahesh Dattani's "Dance Like a Man" and "On A Muggy Night in Mumbai", this past week Joy was at the ongoing Virasat Festival-05 in Dehra Dun to perform Lillette Dubey's "Womanly Voices" where he enacted half-a-dozen characters with consummate ease.
Based on the short stories by Wajida Tabassum, Mahasweta Devi and Gita Mehta, Joy, who has learnt his craft under Ebrahim Alkazi and has worked with Safdar Hashmi and Habib Tanveer, says it is one of the most difficult plays he has been part of.
"The styles and milieu of the three stories are quite different from each other and this makes essaying different characters within a short span difficult." If in Wajida's "Utaran" the issue is identity, in Mahasweta Devi's "Sishu", he lends authenticity to the characters of three different corrupt officials in the tribal belt of Orissa - laced with the local accent-filled four-letter words, he brought the lecherous system alive. Then doing an antithesis, he turned a doting teacher in Gita Mehta's "The Teacher's Story" who fails to protect his disciple.
Indian milieu
Mostly in English, Joy says he does either Hindi or English plays where the situation is Indian. "Indian milieu makes me express better. I don't want to fake accents and attitudes." He holds it is this kind of theatre, which deals with real issues, that keeps the medium socially relevant. "Doing Chekhov and Shakespeare in the beginning of the career is fine, not any more."
Commenting on the increasing presence of bedroom comedies and `starry' presence in theatre, Joy says he doesn't mind it. "In the globalised world every medium is looking for eyeballs. And it is obvious that theatre can't survive without the patrons. So if some failed film stars can bring audience, what's the harm." However, he is not okay with the dilution of the content.
"That's why I left a booming career in television. These days you have to be a bit dumb to survive in creative arts. If you can see through the commercial angles, if you question the flimsy storylines and unconvincing character sketches, you can't sail in the system." He says post "Kaun Banega Crorepati" everything has become corporatised. However, Joy never says no to anything forever. "Tomorrow I might do a Balaji serial but today I am not happy with what's happening. That's why I rely more on advertisement films for sustenance."
The truth
Joy, who has worked with Govind Nihalani in "Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Ma", will be soon seen in "Sau Sach, Ek Jhooth." Based on J.B. Priestly's play "An Inspector Calls", the Bappaditya Roy-directed film has won the Silver Bear at the Lyons International Film Festival in Cannes.
A one-night story it revolves around the murder of a pregnant woman and the eventual suspicion on the members of an industrialist's family. While Mamooty is playing the inspector's role, Vikram Gokhale is the industrialist. Joy is the submissive son-in-law of the industrialist. "The film has already got released in Mumbai. I hope it will soon be seen in different parts of the country." Problem of patrons persists.
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