Veteran TV, film and theatre actor, Anoop Soni, is enjoying his on-going stage play, Ballygunge 1990. “I am playing a man who dumps his girl (Nishtha Paliwal) for better prospects, but fails in whatever he does. Years later, he again meets his ex-love, now married to a very rich guy. To find out what happens next, do watch our thriller genre, love-revenge story.”
“Till now, I was always getting very strong characters (Shanti, CID: Special Bureau, Balika Vadhu). Here, I had to change my body language to suit someone who has always got the rough end of the stick, so it was a challenge.”
NSD (National School Of Drama) alumnus Anoop says, “The best thrill about stage is that you have to remember a lot i.e. your lines, lights, cues to self and others, and last but not the least, exact points on stage to pick and drop properties.”
“The saving grace is that even if you goof up once, there is still the next show to make amends. A true stage artist can really work to immerse himself/herself in the given character.”
Talking about the current position of stage, this son in law of Nadira Babbar says, “Theatre has really grown across India, even in smaller centres and not just in big metro cities like Mumbai and Delhi). The former is very active with all kinds of themed presentations, i.e. comedy, dark, regional (Marathi and Gujarati) and family.”
“But the real impetus will come when people pan-India dish out moolah to watch a good play like they do for films. Even today, stage earnings are not enough to run an actor’s house.”
Here he accepts that of late, most commercial plays are silly comedies. “But we are no one to comment on genre. To each his own. You also have to take commerce (huge hall rentals and print publicity costs) in mind.”
On the sudden rush of small screen actors on stage, he says, “It is mutually beneficial; stage producers get known names which might pull the paying audiences to the auditorium, while tube actors get another platform to make money.”
For the moment, Anoop, who had quit hosting Crime Patrol after eight long years, is now busy with web. He has just done the Zee5 football-based show, Bombers. “There are a few other projects in the pipeline. I have no plans to return to TV in the immediate future.”
“OTT is a welcome change for everybody, right from actors to writers, etc.”
But web is unnecessarily full of s*x and abuse. “Whenever any new medium comes up, there will always be experiments. We should not jump to conclusions, for a lot of good quality work is also coming up.”
“I regard my Crime Patrol stint as a great learning curve. It made me a better and not just a more informed person, for we went well beyond just crime, focussing on many other aspects of life as well,” ends he.