Theater – Requirements and In the Balance.

Are you Theater Material?

You should be:
#Gregarious, focused on the task you’ve set for yourself, and skilled in human resource management.
#Talented, and have the necessary skill for creative writing. #“You also need to be willing to keep working,” believes award-winning playwright, R. Ramanathan.
#Disciplined – It calls for intense discipline of mind and body. You have to go over each step many times until you can execute it perfectly. This calls for patience.
#Confident and have a firm faith in yourself as this positive belief will carry you through the ups and downs of this very competitive and demanding field.

You should not be:
#”Hasty, angry, impatient, overly optimistic or quick to take offence,” warns Joy Fernandes, reputed stage actor-director-writer, also film actor and writer.
#“Arrogant, stubborn, lazy, unreliable or afraid of manual work,” says theatre personality Divya Bhatia. Actually, whether you are a director or a technical person, the willingness to do manual work should be an important part of your personality.
#In it for money It’s not a career option. A playwright does not make too much money. If you are lucky you get a royalty per show or at the end of a batch of shows. Marathi and Gujarati theatre give the playwright a royalty ranging from Rs. 50-1000 per show.

In the Balance:

The good bits:
#“The joy of creating a play in a collective effort is unparalleled,” feels director-actor Rajat Kapoor.
#”The joy of being on-stage and connecting with the audience, even for a moment, is a high that cannot be matched. What you get out of it is tremendous, but intangible. Why do people have babies? Mainly for the joy they bring, right!”

On the other hand:
#”Rejection during auditions is something you have to be able to take in your stride. You spend long periods being without work. It’s a constant struggle.”
#Divya Bhatia, workshop consultant and Joint Festival Director for the Prithvi Festival, 2003, adds, … “Your parents will throw you out. Everyone will ask ‘what do you do,’ regardless of the number of times you tell them. Also, there’s a constant struggle for money. Raising money for a production can be a challenging task!”jokes Rajat.
#”This is not a 9-5 job, so even the best in the field keep at it. You need a certain amount of discipline because you are working with yourself,” he explains.
#“There is more stress on stage, because stage is performing live without any cuts” – Smita Jaykar – famous theatre personality, and Aishwarya Rai’s mother in the movie “Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam”.

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