“I don’t want to be an actor”

Dear God,

Acting is commonly defined as a profession where a person through visual, sound and any other storytelling media tells a story by portraying a character and usually singing or speaking text or play.

Notice the stress on ‘portraying’. Portray in turn, means to depict, represent or show. Now, let’s talk about it in relation to acting skills. A bit of history to open the subject…

Rewind to the 1800s and the first available video footage is of the silent movie Roundhay Garden Scene, a British short film. Fast forward to the 1900s and the first Sound film was called The Jazz Singer, an American musical.

I define acting as an ability to live a character and connect with the audience through the character’s emotions, mannerisms, habits etc. with utmost conviction. Dialogues to me are secondary; significant but secondary. Take for instance, the silent era – a true test of the actors’ skills to portray characters without being able to utter a word. Imagine the amount of expressions, emotions that would need to go into the movie if the actor had to connect with the audience, to sweep them off their feet!!

Can you imagine a ‘Cape fear’, a ‘Men of honor’ or a ‘Godfather I/II in the silent era? I for sure, can’t. These movies relied heavily on the dialogues and the characters’ ability to deliver those power packed, heavy and sometimes snappy dialogues. Most of the characters were based either entirely or loosely on real-life characters. All of them – De Niro, Nicholson, Brando/Pacino lived the characters and delivered us the masterpieces as we know them today.

So, what’s my point you ask? Here goes. I feel acting is no longer the only required skill in times we live today. Times have changed, tastes have changed, and so have emotions and the overall outlook on life. Life is fast-paced, attention spans are reduced, and we want action laced with captivating content.

Why do you think there is so much of hatred for our never-ending Hindi soaps? Simple, we can’t relate to them anymore. I can not relate to the long, endless pauses between dialogues. I find it difficult to agree with the expressions on the characters’ faces, their emotions. They simply do not apply to life as it is today. I wanted to personally explore these soaps to experience why there was so much prejudice. So I watched a couple of them. I couldn’t believe that the characters mouth a single “Nahi!!” four times in four different photographic angles. Who on earth does that? Or there is a force-fit, meaningless and unwanted suspense to every shot before a break or at the end of every episode. And why so much emphasis on a negative word “Nahi!!”? Come on!

In contrast, look at a new breed of actors, Farhaan Akhtar, Neil Nitin Mukesh or Abhay Deol to name a very few. I don’t see any expressions on their faces, no extraordinary emotions and certainly no heavy dialogues. And yet, I am able to readily relate to the characters they play. For example, Farhaan’s character of a lead singer – not only is it believable but also the trauma that it goes through with disbanding without excessive banter or long-winding dialogues and a final reunion with the band is pure magic. Or take Neil’s character of a small-time thug, nothing flashy about it either. He plays this very stoic, cold and unfettered character and executes the heist with almost no effort.

I do not say that acting as a skill is void. It just has to transform into a new plane, a plane where emotions or dialogues don’t matter. All that matters is connection, appeal and a lingering bond with the audience. Movies/plays now need to be fast-paced in capturing attention, for otherwise we have better business to take care of.