A stage to film story

Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Francis Ford Coppola, and Federico Fellini. These are just some of the greatest filmmakers of a generation who began telling stories in the theatre. The two mediums, for as long as they have been around, have been inextricably linked to each other.

Closer home, actors have always been at the forefront of this intermingling of crafts. They go from immersing themselves in the theatre to finding themselves on location, in front of a lens, surrounded by a large crew, to the beats of ‘action’. They play memorable lines to the galleries to depict the subtle emotions that camera close-ups demand.

Theatre makers too, often find themselves in the director’s chair amid film sets, making sense of a medium that may well be rooted in the make-believe but could not be more different. Then there are skills from the theatre that come in handy in filmmaking. Theatre makers-turned-filmmakers speak of their interdisciplinary lives with all the rewards and brickbats that come with it.

Cracking the concept

While there are inherent differences between the mediums and the industries they inhabit, theatre makers admit that cracking the concept can be similar for both.

Akarsh Khurana, theatre maker, and founder Akvarious Productions who has also directed films and TV series like Rashmi Rocket and Karwaan, that the concept isn’t approached differently. But everything changes at the writing stage. “When I go in with a script for a theatre rehearsal, I need to have some clarity before the directorial process begins. With film, there has to be a lot in place beforehand. Every scene has a different location or restriction. You are working with too many variables out of your control,” he explains.

Chanakya Vyas, who directed the short film, Loo, which has been on the festival circuit, believes, a concept is simply an idea. “It is at a later stage that you shape it as a play, script, story, or novel,” he says.

Some concepts and themes are better suited for a cinematic medium, and some lend themselves to theatre more easily. Many factors come into play when choosing a theme for either medium. Some makers have astonishingly diverse repertoires in their film and theatre careers. Theatre and filmmaker Asmit Pathare tells us that it may have to do with how one views these mediums. He goes on to explain.

“I have written one play. It follows a certain ideology I feel deeply about. The play in its form was limited by ideology. Theatre gives you an empty canvas, and that single empty stage becomes your conduit for different kinds of imaginations that gel perfectly with this ideological take,” he says, adding, “It is a metaphorical representation of Kashmir politics. I could do it without even mentioning Kashmir. It was a story that could only blossom in the realm of theatre. Films don’t have the space for that symbolic representation”.

Pathare has no interest in realism on stage. For such stories, cinema he believes may be a more suitable medium. “Sometimes, your subject can inform your medium. The inherent expression of some themes works better on stage. For a raw representation of things as they are cinema is better,” he says.

Anamika Haksar, a renowned theatre maker who directed her 2018 debut feature film Ghode Ko Jalebi Khilane Le Ja Riya Hoon, tells us that her story set in Old Delhi required visual layering that only cinema could achieve. “Transplanting it to theatre would not have the same impact,” she says.

The plays and films an artist makes/ directs may have little in common, in theme, treatment, or response. Each of the makers we spoke to, told us, they approach the two mediums as new.

Abhishek Majumdar, a noted playwright and director, chooses verbose arguments to further the dramaturgy of his plays. His feature film, The Water Station, based on a play by Japanese playwright Ota Shogo, is non-verbal. He tells us that he knew if he ever directed a film, it would be non-verbal and black and white.

“I am not interested in argumentative films but I am deeply interested in argumentative plays. You can watch a film alone or with 100 people and your experience remains unchanged. With theatre, that is not the case. My themes for them are thus determined by whether I am expecting an individual to watch, or a society,” he says.

For noted theatre and documentary filmmaker, Sunil Shanbag, the two different worlds came seamlessly together with Ramu Ramanathan’s play Cotton 56, Polyester 84. “It recounts the history of mill workers. We were working with living history. It made complete sense to meld the two worlds. From the casting to the looking for layers to add to the texture of the play, the process was informed by experience in filmmaking,” he says.

In this approach, he took a step further with Sex, Morality, and Censorship. “It was constructed as a narrative of ideas. We used many elements common to documentary films like archival footage and oral histories. The script was rooted in research. It was quickly labelled documentary theatre,” he recounts.

Theatre vs film

Plays come to life in performance venues built for the form, with an audience ready to receive them. This is true of most proscenium work. Films, on the other hand, develop in living and workspaces, where performance seemingly interacts with our daily lives. Theatre makers tell us, that some of the fundamental differences, also call for unlearning from their primary mediums.

Haksar went to train at a digital film academy, before directing her film. “They spoke about continuity in cinema. For us theatre people, it is an alien concept. In the theatre, time is continuous and there is no fragmentation. It became both an advantage and a disadvantage,” she says, adding that her roots in theatre gave her the ability to navigate time and space uniquely.

For example, when Chanakya Vyas, began writing his first film, he wrote long scenes. “You see a scene in its entirety on stage. It is usually three to five minutes. This is not useful in film. When playwrights write for film, it is a common thing you see. You can still write the odd long scene, but you need to be aware of it,” he says. “There is also a tendency to write long, argumentative dialogue. In theatre, you play to the audience and know the lines they will love and applaud. I’ve spent time looking back at my scenes to see how much needs to be said in a cinematic way,” he adds.

Theatre, with its larger frame of view, and imaginative form, also allows makers to add action and detail in the background of every scene. It lets you play with timelines effectively. “The strength of theatre is that multiple times can exist simultaneously. You can have the birth of a child and the appearance of a ghost and the Second World War in the same frame. They could be 500 years apart,” explains Majumdar. Film, on the other hand, he says, allows for multiple spaces to exist in the same timeframe.

When Shradha Raj, actor, theatre maker, and filmmaker was writing her Kannada short Madvena, Manena? she had to unlearn a lot in the writing process. “I made mistakes wholeheartedly. I approached screenwriting the way I would write a play. And that was a drawback. Theatre is more plot-oriented and not so image-oriented,” says, adding, “In theatre, you can fit a lot of text while in action. In the film, a wall comes up between the viewer and the actor. I didn’t put enough imagery and movement in my script. So much of the weight of the film was on the words,” she says. When on the floor, she also found it difficult to contend with the idea that simplistic actions like lighting a lamp on set, required planning a day ahead.

Theatre evolves, right until the day of the show. Theatre makers often go back to rehearsal rooms to make small fixes before every run. Its live nature also enables the audience to play an active part in it. When in film, directors find the eventual stasis difficult to contend with.

“Theatre is very dynamic; it can keep changing. In cinema, that is only possible to a certain degree,” says Khurana. Vyas agrees and says, the options are further limited in small-budget films. “You will never be able to go back and reshoot a scene. It pushes you to plan more strategically,” he says.

Theatre may have its fair share of limitations, but in cinema, these are tied greatly to the budgets and availability of spaces. “But it is unlimited due to the imagination of the audience. That can often be your biggest asset. In a film, you have to see everything as it is,” says Khurana.

Then, Vyas tells us, there is the awareness that you are writing for an industry. “I know I will pitch the film, to sell and produce. A play is not always written for an industry. People write plays because they have something to say. There isn’t any commercial pressure,” he says.

The interdisciplinary

Despite approaching film as a new medium, directors confess that the interdisciplinary nature of their craft allows them to take their theatre
learnings to a shoot. From rehearsal room etiquette and an understanding of space to most importantly, working effectively with actors.

“Theatre gives you the vocabulary to talk to actors. In the theatre, you know that the actor is not a puppet. It makes you more empathetic to the actors’ process. Now, this trend of workshopping in films is catching on. Zoya Akhtar did it for Archies,” says Vyas.

Pathare also believes that cinema could take a lot back from the theatre when it comes to the actors’ process. “Working with actors in cinema is more immediate. The workshops are not that intense,” he says. “Then again, in theatre, your entire body is in full view of the audience. In film, you have the liberty of focusing on expressions. In cinema, it is about who that person is in the moment. In theatre, it is about who the person is over a period of time,” he adds, explaining.

For Haksar, taking her experience working with actors from theatre to film, allowed the exploration of new facets. “Our theatre training helped us explore a whole gestural code. In film usually see one kind of acting. But, we could move from realistic to folk forms in a single scene,” she says.

Raj took her collaborative approach as a director and actor in theatre to film. She believes that even though the film is essentially a director’s medium, a story is told collectively.

Khurana takes back spatial awareness, from the theatre to his film set. “The one thing that has gone from my theatre to film, has been spatial awareness and the blocking. You have a sense of staging. I often use that in my camera work. I can use the space well and tell the story. I rehearse scenes with the actors on location. Every department watches that rehearsal, and then the cameraperson decides how to shoot it,” he says, detailing the process.

Some cinematic learnings, makers tell us, also go back to the theatre. Khurana uses fluid transitions like those in cinema for his stage productions. Haksar is excited about the possibilities the camera can introduce and may decide to take some of it to her theatre. “You can play with the past, present, and future with moving images,” she says.

Vyas believes that lighting and costumes in contemporary theatre draw heavily from cinema and film education. “There may be technical differences, but the lights and costumes in theatre and cinema can speak to each other,” he says.

Besides elements like sound and image, an interdisciplinary practice empowered Shanbag with a wider range of tools. He explains, “Fictional storytelling for me has been centered around the theatre. On the other hand, dealing with narrative ideas and constructing arguments, was something I was doing with documentary films. So, the construction of ideas comes from film and the dramatic elements from theatre”.

Prachi Sibal is based in Mumbai and has been a features writer for over a decade. Her work has appeared in several publications like VICE India, Scroll, Huffington Post India, Open Magazine and The Ken, among others. Although she has written on several subjects ranging from performing arts and culture to South Indian cinema and business trends, theatre is where her heart truly lies.