Two sides of the same coin

And it is most evident in the case of two good friends who made their debut 25 years ago. Neena Kulkarni and Vandana Gupte may share their closest secrets at home but on stage they have nothing in common. While Neena has done plays in Marathi, Hindi and English, Vandana has stuck mostly to Marathi theatre with a couple of Hindi plays thrown in. Neena is a method actor. For her, theatre craft is about getting under the skin of her character. She questions the director, the writer and every line of the character at every stage. Vandana, on the other hand, is more spontaneous. She uses rehearsals merely to parrot her lines. No dust is raised, no questions are asked. The character is guided into her performance by her instinct alone.

Chandrakant Kulkarni, Marathi, Hindi and Gujarati director who has worked with both of them, finds both approaches equally competent. With Neena, who does a thorough study of the role, he knows exactly what will happen on the day of the actual show. With Vandana, though she always does a perfect job, he is slightly on tenterhooks before the performance. "I like discussing the role thoroughly before opening night but Vandana always saves the best for the last," he says.

And he’s right. Says Vandana, " I think rehearsals are for technicians. I use them to note the stage crafting, music cues and to memorise my lines. I don’t really study the character." For Neena, rehearsals are a learning ground of the other sort. "I need to know each detail of what I am going to do at the grand rehearsal. I look at every dialogue and wonder why my character said that. And I ask the director and the writer the stupidest questions, knowing that I’ll be laughed at, but every nuance has to be worked out," she says.

The difference in their approach is best explained by their reaction to the audience. Neena, who is a director’s actor, needs to use the director as a sounding board to etch out her role. And, she tends to shut out the audience to a large extent. "I act for myself and I am totally lost in the role," she says.

It couldn’t be more different for Vandana. She says, "I am very sensitive to the audiences and how they respond. And with each performance I add a bit to the role. Something new comes out of each show. And the director is not so important to me as far as developing the role goes. The performances are, where a new aspect of the role makes itself visible each time. " For Vandana the play is like an empty canvas — when you start, just the bare outlines are visible. "Slowly you start filling in the features, the background during the rehearsals. But the final colours come on only during the show and even then they’re never really final," she says.

`One day it works, one day it doesn’t’, is something that Neena agrees with. "Sometimes too much method can only do harm. Suppose you have a bad audience and you get distracted, if you can’t improvise on the spot because there has been a deviation from the method, all your stylisation and etching will come to naught," says Neena. But she maintains that acting has to have a method, that it can’t be completely spontaneous or completely improvised.The method that both are in complete agreement about is that an actor cannot keep his or her, cards close to their chest and then improvise during the show. "You can’t change the lines, it’s not fair. Besides the pace gets disturbed," says Neena.

But the dividing line between the two approaches is as fine as the one between the rictus on the crying mask and the laughing mask. Says Vandana, "I have the casual woman next-door image — lively, spontaneous. But this a studied spontaneity. I have done 800 shows of the same play, you cannot be extempore each time. The trick is to keep your reactions fresh — and this is a projected casualness."