Growing up in theatre ambience

It was long back, when Shabana Azmi was four-month-old, her mother would strap her in the back while going for rehearsals at the Royal Opera House in Mumbai, where Prithvi Raj Kapoor's Theatre was located.

As they could not afford maid and her father was also working, she had no choice but to take the baby Shabana for rehearsals. It was quite extraordinary of Kapoor to comprehend the mother's predicament due to financial distress and non-availability of crèche in those times. Thus, he not only allowed the mother to bring baby Shabanabut also encouraged all working mothers to bring their children to theatre. And whenShabana started going to school, during her vacations her mother would take her to theatre.

Later, Kapoor made some costumes for Shabana and she was just put up on the stage with other artists. Shabana says she grew up feeling very comfortable in theatre ambience because of her mom. As her school was a girl's school, she used to always get roles of male characters especially villains.

She then joined St XaviersCollege where there was only English theatre and no Hindi theatre. She along with Farooq Shaikh, who was 2 to 3 years senior to her, started 'Hindi Natymanch'. This was the first time that they got a chance to present Hindi theatre in the college.

Shabana shares, "I went to Pune Film Theatre Industry Institute (FTII). My audition was very interesting as it was conducted by RoshanTaneja, one of the best actors,who never showed his true expressions on his face. While I gave my auditions, he just kept his hands on his chin and showed no expressions, it made me so tense that I forgot my lines." To handle the situation and pass the audition, she enacted as if she was holding an imaginary letter, which was written in a bad handwriting by her grandmother, and she cooked up her own stories impromptu.

She felt that Roshan had caught her forgetting her lines and she would not get admissions. But, she was shocked when he called her and said 'Acchatumhara audition kamyabhai' (your audition was successful).

He said it was clear that she forgot her lines but she dealt with the situation cleverly and bravely carried on without interrupting the audition by engrossing herself in the act.

Now to do this it is important that you need to have a technique so what is important for an actor is observation and a proper concentration and with imagination it improves.The actor's greatest resource base must be life itself.If you are not able to take from life how can you give back to the text?