“It’s almost like a compulsion. Sometimes it’s not that you want to do it, things are using you to get them done. Ideas and thoughts are forcing you to act, to write, to direct, so that they can be expressed,” says actor-director Rajat Kapoor in a tone hinting at the helplessness of his creative endeavours, which are “beyond” him and “controlling” him.
The ‘compulsion’ to create that drives his theatrical and cinematic productions spills over onto his playwriting as well, which is just as ‘spontaneous’ and ‘avant-garde’. An example of this is his play Nothing Like Lear, recently staged at the fourth edition of the Delhi Theatre Festival, starring acting maestro Vinay Pathak. In an interaction with indianexpress.com, Kapoor takes us through the journey of this play, shares his approach towards playwriting and acting, mulls over his creative purpose et al.
Edited excerpts:
How has Nothing Like Lear, which debuted in 2012, evolved in this decade?
Before this, I had done a play called Hamlet: The Clown Prince, my first attempt at Shakespeare. And the idea then was if clowns were to do Hamlet, what would happen? How would they interpret the text? Or what is it that we can bring to the text through that process? And that worked out quite well — that play also ran for 12 years; we just closed it last year.
After Hamlet, I got greedy. I thought, ‘let’s try something similar with King Lear. We took a different approach with Lear — there’s only one actor on stage, which is quite daring and difficult to create. And then, we decided to do away with the plot of King Lear, so it’s an interesting piece where it’s really nothing like Lear and yet, it is absolutely King Lear.
If you look at the play, and if you know the text, you will see all references to the text. Yet, it’s very much a story of an ageing father anywhere in India. Through Lear, we try to find our story.
What is your process of writing a play?
In playwriting, you have a specific way in which nobody writes. We start rehearsal, and the play gets written every day. When we decide to do the production, it’s when we begin rehearsals; we don’t have a text, except for the original Shakespeare text. We don’t know what or where we’re going with it. We have no idea.
Then we start meeting, start discussing actors, and every day we take it a little further, we find something interesting. With Lear, we decided to do away with the plot. But what was interesting for me was to find the themes. We asked ourselves- what are the themes of Shakespeare’s King Lear? — Old age, the relationship between parents and children, betrayal, loss of power, blindness, bastard brother. We started taking these themes from the play, and we started improvising around that with clowns and also started bringing our stories to it — the story of my daughter and me, of Vinay’s (Pathak) daughter and him, stories with our parents, so it became really ours.
And yet, the themes were very much Shakespeare’s. Interesting and hard. It’s scary because you don’t know what you will have at the end of it. It’s a massive risk in the creative sense that you might end up with crap. But you have to be ready to take that risk every time if you want to achieve something. You have to be prepared to jump off the cliff. Take the leap of faith, so to speak.
Does being an actor help the writer and director in you, and vice versa?
In cinema, it does, for sure. But in theatre, I don’t do much acting; I’m strictly directing in theatre. But in cinema, it helps nominally to know from both sides — what an actor feels in front of the camera and what a director might want from you as an actor. It helps enormously.
Do you identify yourself as an actor or a director first?
Entirely as a director, a film director. Film is my first passion, my first love. That’s how I see myself. I’ve tried to pursue filmmaking all my life. Acting has happened to me by chance. That’s my second avatar.
Filmmaking is your passion, but you’ve continued doing theatre as well. What importance does it hold for you?
She (theatre) brings a very different kind of joy and a very different kind of challenge than a film. When you perform or have a show, that joy is also incredible that cinema can’t give you. But on the other hand, with cinema, the joy is that it will live forever. It will live after you’re gone.
Did you always want to be a director? How did all this start?
I always wanted to be a film director. Growing up in Delhi, I had no idea about theatre. I was very passionate about films even at the age of 11-12. By the age of 15, I was sure I would make films. Then I joined a film society in Delhi and started watching world cinema, which expanded my horizon at 16. And then, I went to the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune, to study filmmaking at 24. Then I came to Bombay and have been trying to make films. That’s all I do.
Any new play coming out soon?
The Brothers Karamazov next year, inshallah.
What is your creative purpose?
I wonder if there’s a larger realm. The aim is to go deeper within me. You’re making a film because you want to discover yourself in a way. And you don’t know who you are. You get closer to who you are with each film and play. Some things get resolved within you. It’s like, I want to do this film because of not any other reason except that this film is compelling to be made from within me.
This character is compelling to come out to people. And I must follow that compulsion. ‘Why? What is it? What is that this character wants?’ These questions come up. I must follow that character’s journey. It’s almost like a compulsion, almost like a disease. Sometimes it’s not that you want to do it; it’s that things are using you to get them done. The ideas and thoughts are forcing you to act, write, and direct so that they can be expressed.
How do you approach a character and get into its skin?
As simply as possible. Without too much hard work. For me, the script is very important. And I think the script solves most problems; you don’t have to do too much. And then the second stage is your costume. The costume helps me tremendously. Once I have an idea of what he’s wearing, what he looks like, does he have a moustache, a beard, or a clean shave, these things, even though they’re very ordinary, somehow are everything to me.
Once I figure this out, then everything else follows. That gives me a certain walk, a certain feeling, a certain kind of breathing. And then I follow that without overthinking. I don’t believe in creating backstories and writing notes.
"You’re making a film because you want to discover yourself in a way. And you don’t know who you are. You get closer to who you are with each film and play," says Rajat Kapoor. 
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