Actor Kunaal Roy Kapur about himself, as he prepares to perform in a play in town soon

'I put moral barriers'

…says actor Kunaal Roy Kapur about himself, as he prepares to perform in a play in town soon

Jayeeta Mazumder
Actor Kunaal Roy Kapur is no newbie to the stage. He's been doing it since he was 13. Even though he earned tremendous success with the film Delhi Belly and is suddenly in the limelight, Kunaal has been having his love affair with the theatre for almost 15 years now. And he promises that affair will never end. To prove his point, he reveals that he's signed on a comedy after much deliberation, but his focus at the moment is on the play, 1-888 DIAL INDIA that he'll soon be seen performing in. Directed by Anuvab Pal and produced by Raell Padamsee, the play also stars Ashwin Mushran, Sophie Choudry, Prerna Chawla, Faezeh Jalali, Siddharth Kumar and Ratnabali Bhattacharjee.
Kunaal's association with Anuvab goes back a long way. "I and Anuvab have been working together for a while now. We met on the sets of Loins of Punjab and then it continued into The President is coming. What appealed to me about the play is my character's never-say-die attitude. Personally, I put moral barriers to how far I'd go to get things done, but this guy doesn't think in terms of good and bad," he says.
The play, he admits, has evolved over time. And sometimes even tweaked too. The play is a thrilling comedy that takes the idea of outsourcing to a new level, as a call centre helpline helps save suicidal Americans. "We do change a few things but that's depending on what might work and what might not. The play has an appeal primarily because it's about modern India," he adds. Ask him if he thinks his recent success with the portrayal of the 'cool' Nitin in Delhi Belly will bring in more people, and Kunaal reasons, "The object of doing a play is to get people to come and watch it. And if new audiences are coming in and getting initiated into watching plays, that's great for theatre."
Kunaal, like most theatre actors, agree that the stage is an out and out actor's medium.
"Apart from the immediate response, you feel fulfilled more importantly. Through the course of the play, you graph the character yourself. It's a tactile sort of experience. While in a film, you do two scenes everyday, so it's more fragmenting at the end of the day. A film is definitely a director's medium," he says, adding that both are different but enjoyable.

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