Professional theatre training acts as a vehicle to release the body, breath and voice of an actor – tools essential for any performance. Here’s what about how theatre training prepared them for life on and off-stage and screen.

1. Stepping Stones: in an actor’s
journey
Doing theatre is not just about being on stage and performing. In fact, what one sees
on stage is only a manifestation of theatre. Doing theatre is about the process. It is
about peeling away layers of one’s self and the stories one wants to tell. It is the lives
we lead, the human beings we become, the manner in which we meet our bodies and
voices.
Consequently, acting and theatre training is not just about acquiring certain skills or
learning some techniques. Being an actor and theatre-maker requires one to be
vulnerable: to ourselves, to the characters one plays, and to others around us. Part of
being an authentic performer is the ability to meet one’s vulnerabilities and be open to
receiving. In the absence of training, it could perhaps take longer to get there.
Professional theatre training acts as a vehicle to release the body, breath and voice of
an actor – , tools essential for any performance. It helps in grounding oneself
physically and emotionally. It compels us to look inward and become a witness to
who we are before deciding on how to move forward. Seasoned actors are often asked
the question, ‘is theatre really necessary?’ Here’s what some of them had to say about
how theatre training prepared them for life on and off-stage and screen:
Cultivating self-awareness
“Training made me realise the patterns I carried with me as an actor,” shares Adarsh
Gourav, the BAFTA-nominated actor for his performance in The White Tiger. “I used
to walk with a drooped spine, my shoulders always slouched and I had a slight head
tilt. I used a certain bag of tricks as an actor. All my characters started having similar
traits because Adarsh had those patterns,” he says.

2. Prior to learning acting and theatre-making, Gourav didn’t know how to use his body
well. He had worked on camera earlier, which required one to be minimal and was
usually discouraged from engaging the lower body. That changed during his training
at the Drama School Mumbai (DSM).
“It centred me. It helped me channelise my restlessness and gave me a sense of
direction and purpose,” he says.
He adds that what he carries most from his time at DSM is the idea of ‘listening’. “I
never used to listen to my co-actors and always decided what I wanted to do. So, I
never got affected by what other people did. I learned to be present and respond to
things as opposed to deciding what you want to do.”
Bag of tools
As much as being a place for self-discovery, a drama school is also a space for
experimentation, making mistakes and trying to find one’s voice as an artiste. To this
end,students are introduced to new techniques and tools that’ll help them find what
works best for them when it comes to performance. Training ranges from yoga,
kalaripayattu, voice-work, singing to learning animal work, improvisation, Laban and
Lecoq’s techniques, working with heightened text (Shakespeare), script analysis,
among others
Srishti Shrivastava recalls a moment from her time at DSM when things clicked for
her. One of the things taught during the course is animal work i.e. using animals to
build a character. “At one point during school, we were working with Faezeh (Jalali)
and learning Shakespeare as well. I was doing Shylock’s monologue from The
Merchant of Venice. And I couldn’t crack that monologue until Faezeh suggested I do
Shylock as a hen. It worked! Even now, when I’m working on characters, I go back to
animal work to see which animal fits a particular character,” she shares.
With so much new information, it is often not possible to use everything one learns.
Sometimes, it takes years to understand what was taught and seeing if it works for the
performer. Shrivastava recalls an exercise the renowned actor Neeraj Kabi made them
do during the training. “He used to make us sit in front of a wall, recall memories and
perform it for ourselves. Yet somehow I could never use it in my work. It was only
recently while working on a film that I tried it out,” she says, “He used to say, you
take the memory, it changes your breath, changes your voice. It changes everything,
changes your body and it happened to me during the shoot.”
Apart from learning and discovering new tools, theatre training also helps an actor
understand how to use their body in the best way possible.
At 46 years, Mahitha Suresh came to study at DSM with a back problem. During that
period she had to take a month off to undergo a spinal surgery. Despite this setback,

3. she asserts that her training helped her understand how to use her body not just on
stage, but in life as well.
“The whole program is highly physical. And all of the teachers know exactly how to
use the bodies for best effect. However, when they teach how to use your body in a
similar way, it isn’t just about acting on stage – it is about how to take care of your
body and let your movements flow: minimal effort for maximum effect,” says Suresh.
The doubt before certainty
When working within an ensemble, the learning is both collective and individual.
Each student is on a separate journey while going through it together. And a lot of
times, there are no ‘Eureka!’ moments during the training.
When Shrivastava joined DSM, she admits she was shocked. “I didn’t know what the
hell to do because everyone around me was so good. Somehow, they seemed to know
what they were doing and I had no clue as to why we were doing kalari and
voice riyaaz every morning,” she recalls.
It was only when she performed in the play Shikhandi one and a half years after
graduating from DSM, that it all made sense to her. “That’s when I understood why
we did kalari, voice and other exercises. I understood that it opens up my body and
makes me really aware when I’m performing on stage and in front of the camera.”
Theatre training is never a smooth, steady ride.
It certainly wasn’t one for Aswin Sasi Varrier, who went through a rollercoaster, one
that was filled with more downs than ups. “Drama school broke me and my
confidence down,” he recollects, “There was technical jargon thrown at us which I
didn’t connect to and it made it really tough for me to crack the whole training
process. For most of the TMLs (Theatre Making Laboratory), I received negative
feedback.”
But the finding-an-actual-oasis-in-a-desert moment, for Varrier, was when he did an
improv with two other ensemble members where they were three old men discussing
the construction of a bridge. After the improv, their teacher Puja Sarup observed that
he had a knack for coming up with convincing voices for characters.
‘Transformational’
Varrier admits that even today, 80 percent of what he learned at drama school doesn’t
make sense to him but he still considers it to be one of the best years of his life. “I
believe I needed to go through it,” he says. “DSM brought discipline and rigour into
my life and made me realise the amount of hard work that goes into making theatre.
The fact that you just have to get up in the morning, show up, and be there and work
hard, and hard, and hard, until the end of the day.”

4. For Shimli Basu, another DSM alum, training helped become more disciplined, as a
person and an actor. “There are days when I don’t have anything to do per se but I feel
a lot of things. It is on those days that I get up and I do the Chekhov exercises that we
were taught. It is on those days that I know, if I do my breathing exercises, if I do push
and pull (archetypal gestures in Chekhov technique), if I do my voice riyaaz, it will
make me feel better.”
Beyond acting
Training isn’t just about acting. It opens up different avenues within theatre and aims
to create thoughtful theatre-makers. Niketan Sharma, an alumnus and the founder
ofNOW Productions, says there wasn’t enough time during the training period to do a
deep dive into other aspects of theatre, apart from acting.
“But since we were given a good foundation in the other areas, I found the strength
and courage to make a play from scratch and see it through to its performances on
stage,” he believes. He also adds that the training he received at DSM gave him the
confidence to create his own work even when he wasn’t getting work from others.
“For the first three years after drama school, I was not comfortable giving auditions
for screen work – the whole idea of ‘fit/not fit’ (the casting conundrum where
directors look for ‘perfect’ actors based on their idea of the film/web series) just didn’t
sit right by me. So instead, I went ahead and made my play, Adrak.
Training, at DSM specifically, aims to build more resilient, capable human beings
who are able to understand nuance, have diverse viewpoints and hold complexities in
their head.
To this end, Suresh now describes herself as not ‘just an actor’ but a ‘thinking actor’.
“Today, I’m an actor. I’m a writer. I’m a storyteller. I am a theatre maker. I know how
to create performances for myself. I know how to take something small, like a line
from a conversation and create a 10-minute performance piece out of it. I know how
to do that because of the skills I learned at DSM. And as long as I can create theatre
for myself, I will never be an out-of-work actor,” she concludes.