NEWSMAKER
For a new innings
P. K. AJITH KUMAR
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Actor Revathy, in a freewheeling chat, opens up about her film career and her stage debut.
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Photo: Ramesh Kurup
Holding centrestage: Revathy’s done a variety of challenging roles.
There were only about 50 of us, in that small conference hall at the Government Youth Hostel, East Hill, Kozhikode. Theatre activists, writers, film directors, a doctor and a couple of journalists made up that tiny audience. For about 40 minutes, we
were held captive by a remarkable one-woman show.
On that warm Monday night, as she breathed life into Vyjayanti in Chetan Datar’s play, “No. 1, Madhav Baug”, Revathy surprised everyone; even those who have seen her in a variety of challenging roles on the silver screen, right from her first film “Manvasanai”. The small-built actress seemed to grow tall during her portrayal of a middle-aged, well-educated woman in Mumbai who has to come to terms with the fact that her favourite son has an alternate sexual preference.
The day after the play, when I meet her at her friend’s house in one of the most serene localities in Kozhikode, she says she enjoyed performing the previous night as much as the audience watching her. “You know, the way I perform this play depends a lot on the audience,” says Revathy, who completed 25 years in films last year. “Last night, I knew I was in front of a knowledgeable, attentive audience. That was why the play went on for nearly 45 minutes; sometimes it lasts only for half-an-hour.”
Ready for theatre
Though she made her theatrical debut in 2007, she has done only about 15 shows and performed only in Bangalore, Hyderabad and Jaipur before. Because, she feels, she is not yet ready for a larger audience. But the fact is, she is ready for the bigger stage. A tour de force performance like this deserves a much larger audience.
Revathy’s intimate theatre has worked. There is no reason why she shouldn’t be able to replicate her success in proper theatre. She promises she will step on to a regular stage before long. “Now, I feel India is ready to receive English plays more than ever before,” she says.
Though she always enjoyed watching theatre, it was only when Arundhati Nag asked her to consider graduating from a viewer to a performer that she began to think about doing a play. “That was the time when I wasn’t too happy with the kind of roles I was being offered in films, but I was very apprehensive about going on stage though, for I was not at all confident about memorising my lines; the maximum you have to memorise in films is four lines, you know,” she smiles. It turned out she could memorise the entire play in 10 days.
The age factor
And thus began yet another memorable phase of her career, at Ranga Shankara in Bangalore. “I am glad that I listened to Arundhati, my director Marium Jetpurwala and Shanta Gokhale, who did a great job of translating Chetan’s play,” says Revathy. “This play has helped me rediscover my passion for acting.”
She is disappointed that Indian filmmakers do not know what to do with a heroine if she is past the age of playing the young girl in love. “Look at Hollywood, see the kind of work the actresses do after they reach 30 or 40. Meryl Streep — she is my all-time favourite and I saw her “Lions for Lambs” three times in one week at a multiplex in Chennai last year — Susan Sarandon and Julia Roberts continue to get excellent roles even as they grow older,”” she points out.
She, however, adds that she was lucky to work with some of the most talented directors in the country, like Mani Ratnam (“He showed us how we could make commercial cinema that was sensible and artistic”), Bharathiraja, Balu Mahendra, Ram Gopal Varma, Priyadarshan, T.V. Chandran and Bharathan. “Of course it helped that my first film was with Bharathiraja,” she recalls. “I wasn’t too excited though about acting while doing ‘Manvasanai’ (Tamil), or my second, ‘Kattathe Kilikoodu’, (Malayalam) with Bharathan. I thought I would go back to my studies and my Bharatanatyam, which I had been learning since I was seven. But slowly, I fell in love with acting.”
Multifaceted
From acting she moved into directing and did her reputation no harm with films like “Mitr, My Friend” and “Phir Milenge”. “I am glad that I got three top mainstream Bollywood stars, Salman Khan, Abhishek Bachchan and Shilpa Shetty for ‘Phir Milenge’,” she says. “I told Salman, who was my hero in a Hindi film once, that I couldn’t afford him but he just smiled. Do you know what he did? He donated his entire payment to charity.”
Revathy’s next film too will be in Hindi, with mainstream Bollywood stars in the lead. “The script is ready and I hope to start shooting soon,” she says.
She feels Bollywood has become an exciting place now. “There is so much talent and I really am impressed with young actors like Abhay Deol, who was brilliant in ‘Dev D’,” she says. “I thought Kangana Ranaut was outstanding in ‘Fashion’. Farhan Akhtar is a real bundle of talent. In South, I like Meera Jasmine.”
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