TAKING OFF MANI KAUL'S GLASSES

DY design, Lapdiang Artimai Syiem is, at times, watchful and tentative, receiving and responsive in her first lead role in a Hindi film, Mani Kaul and That Thing called the Actor.

- PARAMITA GHOSH

A still from Mani Kaul and That Thing called the Actor

(MITA VASISHT)

Just like Mita Vasisht was, when presenting Siddheshwari Devi, the great thumri singer of Benaras in the 1991 film by Mani Kaul, one of Indian cinema's greatest auteurs and form-breakers. Common to both films is Mita. In Mani's film, she was the lead actor; in this one, she is behind the camera. Mani Kaul ... is her directorial debut, and it is based on the actor's craft, drawing from Mita's experiences of training herself not to 'become' another Siddheshwari but present her spirit in line with Mani's vision of how Siddheshwari herself came to be.

In that journey if Mita drew from life, from the history of gestures of great actors like Helene Wiegel, German playwright Bertolt Brecht's partner and collaborator in the Berliner Ensemble, she also drew from her own training in the Natyashastra taught to her at the National School of Drama (NSD). Syiem, also an NSD-trained actor collaborated, says Vasisht, in much the same vein.

Mita's film, while being of the Mani Kaul school is not about Mani but a synaesthetic experience of the actor's world. And Lapdiang presents her director's life and processes when Mita was an actor for Siddheshwari, down to the loosening of limb, the act of watching, listening, thinking, halting, the touching of a swing, the opening of her mouth to sing on a ghat of Benaras as actorly exercises. In Mita's film, what happens before the film starts, the nuts and bolts of the actor's craft, is key.