Reminder: When an actor played two characters simultaneously!

When an actor played two characters simultaneously!

The date has been set for the Amar Photo Studio opening show. But I still hadn’t solved two problems in the play, there was a scene where two characters were supposed to be on stage but they were played by the same actor! And the second was that I needed to show a change of epoch.

We were experimenting with time travel in the room and wanted to create something that people had never seen on stage before. To make this happen, we got in touch with various magicians, engineers, technicians and looked at the details and logistics.

So, to solve the first problem concerning the two characters, we thought of several solutions. One thing that stood out to me was showing a pre-recorded video of one of the characters and the actor would interact with that video. I was sure the give and take would have created an interesting scene. After discussing it with our set designer and a technical director, I became more and more convinced that this was the way to go. It was extremely complicated, but fascinating nonetheless!

As we got ready, I remembered the two rooms I had used a projector in earlier. One was a children’s play, which was also a fantasy. And the other was a sangeet natak in which we used 3D renderings to showcase the grandeur of palaces, war scenes, etc. Although it worked most of the time and was appreciated, I encountered technical difficulties more than once.

I realized that I was heavily inspired by the visuals of the pieces I had seen overseas and desperately wanted to create something like this here. But I hadn’t yet realized that the technical expertise and precision required for the results were possible there since the plays took place for months in a single theater. In fact, they are also designed according to the space of the theater. In India, we travel with our plays. Not to mention, we have to assemble the whole thing, adjust the lights, perform and then free up the space in almost four hours. The use of such technology becomes very difficult. And the only time things go wrong, they tend to go awfully wrong!

I had used the projector in my previous rooms to create some decor elements. So when something went wrong, it disrupted the visual but did not result in the performance of the actors. What I was thinking in this case was an interactive piece and I realized the kind of risk I was taking. One small glitch and it could get in the way of one of the most important scenes in the play. So I decided to go back to basics and use the power of a performance instead.

Costume designer Kalyani came up with a half-and-half costume design. The actor, Suvrat, wore the costumes of one character on the left and the other on the right. He played both characters at the same time. The light designer assigned two different colored lights for each character. He turned on the lights according to the character. Suvrat beautifully emphasized the manners and oral quality of the two characters, so that they could be differentiated by the audience, even though they would only see one actor on stage.

We were worried if the public would understand this. But I have learned not to underestimate the intelligence of the public. And such risks must be taken! Otherwise, how will we know if these experiments will work or not? So we decided to go ahead with this idea.

This scene became the highlight of the play, and rightly so! It was one of those plays where all departments came together beautifully and celebrated the simplicity of storytelling in the theater!

But there was still a huge problem to be solved, that of changing the epoch while a scene was being performed. It would have seemed extremely shabby if the backstage performers had taken the stage while the scene was unfolding and had a change of scenery. I still had almost two weeks to find a solution. Based on this recent experience, I changed my way of thinking and went back to my roots and instead tried to find simple solutions.

I will talk more about it next week …

Nipun Dharmadhikari is a storyteller and can’t wait to tell them on stage, in front of the camera or in person.