same act: Tannishtha Chatterjee and (left) Kitu Gidwani

She seldom does things that she doesn’t believe in. So, when Kitu Gidwani felt theatre wasn’t rewarding enough, she stayed away from it for three long years.

But the self-proclaimed “non-conformist” resurfaced on stage with the comedy Your Place or Mine early this year. The play by Darshan Jariwala focuses on marital infidelity.

“I did a lot of theatre from the late 1980s till 2000. Then I got a little fed up because there is no money in it. I was in London for four months for a play in 2003 and didn’t do anything till this year,” says the diminutive actress made famous by Doordarshan serials Air Hostess, Swabhimaan and Junoon.

Currently, a couple of projects have got her excited. “Raman Ramanathan is writing a play on three of Ibsen’s heroines. The women come into a psychiatrist’s clinic and talk about their problems. There’s Nora, Hedda Gabler and the other I can’t remember. I have been reading and studying Ibsen and I like his works very much,” smiles Kitu, sitting at the Akar Prakar gallery in Hindusthan Park last week.

So, will she play Nora? “No, not Nora, something different. But let’s see which character I fit into,” she adds.

The other act is by Anju Makhija, poet and playwright. Set in Mumbai, the piece will revolve around the relationship between domestic helps and their masters. “Work is in progress, but first we will hold some play-reading sessions to see how it works out,” says Kitu. “We are also trying to do a piece on Shah Abdul Latif, the poet from Sindh… But it is difficult for me to focus because I am not with any particular group. Working with different groups, different people all the time…”

The “poor quality” of current productions is the other reason why the stage doesn’t hold as much attraction for Kitu as before. “Good theatre is not happening in Mumbai anymore. It wasn’t like this when I was doing theatre with Naseer (Naseeruddin Shah). Now Bollywood is such a big influence… I think a lot of people from my generation have become very good writers, like Rahul de Cunha,” she muses, letting out a ring of smoke from her cigarette.

Any favourite co-actor? “I loved doing theatre with Naseer,” she smiles.

Song and dance

Having wrapped up the filming of Monica Ali’s bestseller Brick Lane in London and Calcutta, protagonist Tannishtha Chatterjee is setting off for Kerala on a different mission.

The dusky actress will stay put at veteran dancer Daksha Seth’s dance company located in Trivandrum to revive an old performance piece along with Daksha, daughter Isha Sharvani (now a Bollywood name) and British stage director Tim Supple (who had steered the pan-Indian A Midsummer Night’s Dream).

Postcards from God is a song-dance-performance piece the three women had worked on and staged in Kerala and Mumbai a year ago. Supple is keen on directing the piece and taking it places. “Tim had seen a DVD of the performance and liked it so much that he now wants to direct it. Originally, we didn’t have any director for the performance and it shaped up with all of us contributing,” says Tannishtha.

The NSD-trained actress made an entry into the core team when music composer Devissaro, (Daksha’s husband), met her in Mumbai. “He was looking for someone who could act, sing and dance,” says she.

Postcards from God has a loose girl-meets-boy narrative, based on Imtiaz Dharker’s Postcards poems. “There are just characters who swap roles. It revolves around the Bombay riots and shows life in a slum. I play a woman who might be a sex worker… I sing a gibberish tune I learnt in my childhood in a final dream sequence when Isha dances with her lover. I also do a dance item number in it,” reveals the star of Shadows of Time, Florian Gallenberger’s Bengali film.

“Dance performers there are used to approaching the forms first and then trying to mould expressions in them, whereas I, being an actor, explore the emotions and then think about the forms that would suit them. So, I asked Daksha’s dancers to follow my method and they found it very exciting,” says Tannishtha, looking forward to her four-month stay in Kerala.