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After decades in theater and Bollywood,Delhi-based veteran actress Sushma Seth released her first book earlier this week.

After decades in theater and Bollywood,Delhi-based veteran actress Sushma Seth released her first book earlier this week. Titled Stage Play: Journey of an Actor (Amarryllis,Rs 350),the book is part autobiographical and part a manual for children learning theatre. “I have been associated with children’s theatre for a long time and I know how quickly they grasp things. But I realised that there are no good manuals available with examples from an actor’s personal life. This one is with a personal touch,” says Seth who has written this book after compiling notes that she collected over a period of 10 years while teaching acting at Sri Ram Bharatiya Kala Kendra.

Seth handled workshops at Prithvi Theater and NCPA in Mumbai and the National School of Drama (NSD) in Delhi for a considerable period during 70s and 80s. “This book is actually an effort to put all my knowledge into practical use. I started learning how to act quite late. It was after college that I went to Carnegie Mellon University at Pittsburg and learnt the ropes of acting. But,this book is an effort on my part to make sure that an easy manual is readily available to people who want to learn how to act,” adds Seth,who is playing the character of the sutradhar in the reinvented Hum Log on Doordarshan.

Seth begins the book by talking about her early years in school and the consequent passion for drama and then acting in every classical play possible. Seth talks about her love for the stage since childhood when she would watch plays with her family. There were no drama classes in her school,so Seth eventually took to acting when she was in Convent of Jesus and Mary college. She later on divides the book into chapters where acting basics have been written down step by step. “My experience with theatre has been extremely enriching and that was something which also gave me the confidence to act in films. My stage roles in plays like The Taming of the Shrew,Ek Chadar Maili Si were the characters that people would kill for,” says Seth,adding that the book is a gift for the children whom she has taught over the years.

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