The importance of ‘switching off’

The world is a stage but don’t let your act overpower your true identity

When I heard the news of National Award-winning filmmaker Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s passing away on June 10, 2021, the visuals of his much-acclaimed Bengali/Hindi film ‘Bagh Bahadur’ flashed in front of my eyes.

A 1989 film, it revolves around a beharupiya, an impressionist. He paints himself as a tiger and dances in a village every year. His dream is to get married to his accompanist’s daughter. Things are going well for him until one day, a travelling circus arrives in the village with a caged leopard. Soon the villagers start liking the real leopard over the painted tiger. In another jolt, his dream girl falls for the ringmaster. To prove that he is as fearless as a real tiger, he enters the cage to fight with the leopard. He, obviously, dies.

The ending was heart-wrenching but it also got me thinking. Can a role consume an actor so much that he forgets his identity and starts believing ‘he is the character he is playing’?

I had similar thoughts after watching ‘Ray’ recently. It is a web series based on short stories by Satyajit Ray. In one of the stories, called ‘Bahrupiya’, a makeup artist uses his skill to commit crimes. Later we see that his mask (prosthetic) gets stuck to him as a result of a curse.

If an actor is not trained well in dramatics, that is, in the art of ‘switching on’ while performing on stage and ‘switching off’ when the play is over, then he or she can struggle to detach from the character in real life.

This hangover of the character is less likely to happen in films or TV. The process gives you a lot more time to ‘switch off’, in between the cuts and while talking to the crew in front of you.

However, if an artiste is playing an intense character, then the character can leave a mark on the artiste. I know many eminent artistes who have felt nauseated after playing negative characters back-to-back. So one should be cautious while performing such roles, be it for a play, a TV serial or a movie. Being an actor, I get opportunities to play different characters — some are very powerful. But I keep reminding myself that I am only an actor, that my job is to play a character (for a certain duration). I make a conscious effort to not get carried away. Getting trapped in a role, which has characteristics other than mine, whether they are negative, grey or positive, is a real curse.

However, it is not just actors who get to play a variety of characters. Everyone does. How we behave with people depends on the relationship we share with them. A man, for instance, would behave differently with his mother, wife, siblings, children, boss or friends. Sometimes our behaviour is genuine, sometimes fake, and sometimes in between. But what if we get used to the fakeness and forget our own selves?

Oh no! I don’t want myself to be cursed like that. I don’t want to get trapped in this fakeness, neither as an actor nor as a person. I cannot imagine asking myself or others, ‘What am I? Who am I?’.

(The author is an actor, singer, writer and director)