Marathi theatre and TV actor Swanandi Tikekar known for plays such as DON"T WORRY BE HAPPY and 103 and popular TV shows such as Dil Dosti Duniyadari is back in the theatres with three plays, one each in Marathi, Hindi and English. In this interview, she talks about her current projects, her childhood inspirations to pursue acting, her love for musicals and more.
By Neha Shende
Currently you are doing three plays in three different languages: SUNDAR MEE HONAAR, MAHANAGAR KE JUGNU and MIDDLE-CLASS DREAM OF A SUMMER'S NIGHT. Let's start with SUNDAR MEE HONAAR. How did you get the project?
I got a call from the producers, and they said they wanted to do a play called SUNDAR MEE HONAAR, which was written in 1958 by P.L. Deshpande (Pu La) and the play is set in 1952. It's been performed quite a few times since then, but Pu La being a timeless writer, his writing was something that attracted me. They called me and said, “Would you like to play a particular part called ‘Baby Raje'?” She's the second oldest sister and she is a very rebellious character. These names – Pu La, the producer and my character – attracted me.
How familiar were you with Pu La's work before this project? Of course, we all know him as a prominent figure in the Marathi literary world. But had you read any of his books or seen any of the plays he had written?
I had seen most of his plays, the recordings of which are also available. But the funny thing is, my friend circle in Mumbai, a few artistes, we call Pu La ‘aajoba' – ‘aajobanchya goshti' (grandpa's stories). Basically, the concept is, when you can't fall asleep, then whatever kathakathan or storytelling is available on YouTube in Pu La's voice, we listen to it and that helps us fall asleep. After a stressful day, you are very tired, and you think you are just going to crash and go off to sleep the moment you hit the bed. But somehow, some nights, you hit the bed, and you are stark awake. There are some thoughts that are peaking, tasks that you have procrastinated, they come out of some darkness, and you can't sleep. That's the time when we say, “Call aajoba, ask aajoba to tell us a story and we'll fall asleep.” So, my recent association with Pu La has been this. Very weird but very true. Whether it's Mhais, Vyakti Ani Valli, Batatyachi Chaal, all his storytelling on YouTube, I have listened to it all. That got me really close to him.
Can you also talk about your character, Baby Raje? She is quite an amazing woman, a staunch feminist.
The beauty of Pu La's writing, especially in this play, is that it feels very contemporary. He has written a character in 1958 but it's a girl from 2025, too. All of us women, even today, have to fight for something or the other, a girl may have to fight even for a small thing like wearing a sleeveless top. And yet, we come from privileged homes. There are women who come from extremely conservative backgrounds. And in that situation, for every decision that they want to make by themselves, there has to be a certain sense of rebellion. That is what attracted me the most to the play. If I am playing a character that is so relevant today despite being written 70 years ago, that is some powerful writing.
Your character was great in this one, the play also gave a good message, as do the other two plays you are currently acting in. Do you feel like you must comprehensively agree with what the writer and director have to say through the piece, or do you look at your character and say, this is a meaty character, why not do it?
What the writer and director want to say through their work might not be what I want to say in my life, ideology-wise. But if the character pleases me – because I am also an actor who loves the process of acting – the process of acting also includes doing something which you don't believe in. So, if I must do something which I don't believe in at all, then it is a delight for me because I am bending my mind to lie. I am getting to practice. That is the biggest exercise as an actor. I am playing a part which is far from my ideology, still I have to get myself in sync with the character and the story every second. If I am doing a character that's close to how I am, that is already easy, I understand it. But me playing a murderer, me playing a typical housewife and daughter-in-law on a TV show is completely different. I will feel like, why is she waking up at 4am and making tea? But I am going to have to do it convincingly. And for an actor to get conviction is to excel in the performance. If I get conviction for something that I do not agree with, I think I have achieved a lot as an actor.
And how do you get that conviction if you do not agree with the character?
It is very difficult. Your conscience constantly tells you that this is not right. To fight your way through and do the opposite of what you think is very difficult. It is like conditioning, like you becoming another person.
Do you find a trait or two that you agree with and build reasoning for the character's behavior?
In such cases, I find people resembling the character around me. I am not like that, but I know somebody around me who is, who I don't agree with in real life. But what if I am playing them? The fact that I exist means people with opposite thoughts and belief systems must exist. They might even be my immediate family members. I observe how they approach life. It is very beautiful, because you learn to understand somebody else, even if they are different. Acting is so close to living that if you learn to live, you learn to act better. If I am talking to someone who is the opposite of me in terms of belief systems, behavior, etc., I start looking at them and think, “I should study this person as a character.” This happens automatically. A lot of actors say that when they tear up, many times they begin to observe themselves as a third person, analyze why they are crying, so that at some point when they perform, they will remember why they cried at the time.
That leads me to another question. In MAHANAGAR, you, along with several other actors cried so convincingly, so naturally. This is not always easy. How do you get there?
I can't fake cry. I know people who are like, at the count of three – and there will be one tear from the left eye in the left corner. I am not that person. I am a very emotion-driven and spontaneous person. For me, if I am in that moment, if I am true to the moment that I am performing in, only then it works.
You don't draw on emotions from particular events in your life, maybe?
No, that is not how I feel like I should function. Then I wouldn't be committing to my character. In the rehearsals, to achieve that (spontaneity), you can use this as a method, but not while performing. While performing, if you are true to the moment there, then of course, it is going to come to you, because it is an emotion.
Has it ever happened that you got so carried away in your emotion that you weren't able to finish dialogue?
That hasn't happened to me. See, emotion is one part and the body memory that you have from rehearsals is the other part. Body memory is such a beautiful thing, you realize that when performing. Maybe you don't have it when you sit down and read a script for four days, but when one day you stand up and block the scene, then you remember what lines come at what position on the stage. So, whatever said and done, during the performance, your body memory ensures that you remember your lines.
Focus is the key. You might stop or take a longer pause because of emotions. But the fun part, then, is to take your time, to control your emotions, to match it and to continue the line. That is the beauty of it. Acting is performing but also living. In Marathi, you call a show a ‘prayog' – an experiment. So, when it is an experiment, one day, when you get carried away with emotion and pause for four seconds instead of one, it's okay. Take those four seconds, go ahead. And this can happen only in the right environment. We have this environment in MAHANAGAR because there is Amitosh Nagpal (writer and director). He has only told us one thing: joy is what is going to take you ahead in this game. Running after perfection won't take you anywhere. Us feeling joy from what we are doing is what is going to take us places.
You speak in such depth about body memory, emotions, character development. When there's a play like SUNDAR MEE HONAAR that has been adapted several times, do you study previous versions? Your character in those versions?
For the longest time, I didn't watch the recording. I watched it only once, because I didn't have time to read the script before agreeing to play the part. So before agreeing to the part, I said I will watch the recording and decide whether to play the part or not. I was desperate to do a commercial Marathi play when SUNDAR MEE HONAAR came to me. I had not done Marathi commercial theatre for 3-4 years. And I was on the brink of saying that I will do whatever project comes to me next. And by the grace of God, this play came to me. I thought, I am going to do this. Let me just run through it and see. I watched the video, but it didn't create an impression on me. I developed my character and then, in the end, I rewatched the video.
The most important thing about this entire play is that it is the two heroines who are trying to break free. One has already found her rebellion and the other is finding it.
And the one who has found it is encouraging her sister to find it. She is the one who sends the letters to the poet the sister likes. And through all this emotion, you have to say lines in that literary language that Pu La has written, very non-contemporary. How do you convincingly say those lines, those words?
I did not find it non-contemporary at all. Maybe because I have read a lot of Marathi. Maybe because of my grandparents, I already speak very proper Marathi, even though I was educated in the English medium. See, the language is not heavy. It has been beautified in a way that it seems ornate. But ornateness is an innately beautiful thing. We read Marathi poems, old plays by Jayvant Dalvi and P. K. Atre, we are used to this.
Vasantat jyane kokilela gaayla lavla (The one who made the cuckoo bird sing in the spring)
Shravanat jyani unhapausachi pathshivni tharavli… (The one who stitched the rain and sun together in the month of Shravan)
…these lines are normal to me, they are not difficult words, it's only beautification of the language. Everyone loved the script and that is the command of the writer. And luckily with Amitosh too, it is like that because he writes in rhyme. So, I can't change a single word in Amitosh's writing. The meter would get affected, for example, in MIDDLE-CLASS DREAM:
Shut up, you liar! In his heart, jealousy is burning like wildfire!
Or,
Because of him we can't even find a place for our parties and dance For husbands like him, arguments and fighting is the only romance.
If I even change a word here or there, if I say ‘romance' at the beginning, it's gone. And it's the same with SUNDAR MEE HONAAR. That is the beauty of the writer, that the actor can't change the lines because the lines are written in meter such that it must be followed. That is what works, that the words are so true to the writer and so his, that if you replace them with yours, it doesn't sound right. The audience can tell that they are not the writer's. That is the identity of the writing.
Did you know Amitosh from before these two plays? How did these projects come about?
I had done a play for a few days with Atul Kumar called AAEEN, which was a commissioned piece. After that, I didn't do anything for one year. Then the same production managers were doing auditions for Amitosh's MIDDLE-CLASS DREAM. They were auditioning some 400 people, and I thought I wouldn't get the part. I went and I auditioned. After I got the part, the cast was all sitting in a circle and he asked us how we were feeling, how we felt during the audition. I said I cried on the way back home. There was a two-day workshop. On the way back home, I called my husband and said I didn't get a chance to perform, there's no way I'm getting the part. And Amitosh said, in fact, that they were thinking I would say no, because I wouldn't have dates free! That they wanted me but that I would say no!
When we did MIDDLE-CLASS DREAM, MAHANAGAR was nowhere in the picture. It came into the picture eight months after we did MIDDLE-CLASS DREAM. When he got me MAHANAGAR, I said I cannot miss this opportunity. I am getting to sing and perform. And that play is very close to my heart because Amitosh gives you that space to be vulnerable and emotionally present. He demands emotional vulnerability, which a commercial play takes away from you. Amitosh gives us that liberty; not once has he said that you forgot this or that line. Did you have fun today? How did you feel? Were you committed? Were you present there? Were you living that one hour as if there's nothing else in your life but that one hour? That is what he gives us.
At the same time, the dialogue is so precise. There are so many musical numbers and songs that you must pick up together at cue. How do you balance singing with acting? How is a musical different from a regular play for you?
I don't find it to be very much different. I just need to take care of my voice for a musical, so that it doesn't strain. Other than that, I feel like I am made for musicals, it comes very naturally to me. I could do nothing else all my life, but musicals.
Have you done musicals before?
No, these are my first ones. There were some musicals we did during college competitions but never in a professional setup.
Do you discuss the singing bit with your co-actors?
See, it has to be a natural flow from prose to poetry. You can't be conscious, yourself. It has to be a part of you. Only then it comes naturally. You know, there are actors in our musical who are not singers. But they are singing, because they love what they do, because joy drives them. A note slipping slightly is okay.
There is a folk theatre spirit to both these plays.
Yes. The theatre company is called Mandali Talkies, it has tamasha or nautanki vibes. Actors sit on the side, they go and play their character and then go back and sit on the side, it has that.
That also ties into how smoothly all of you switch languages in MIDDLE-CLASS DREAM. Does it come easily because we as Indians often do it anyway, or is it hard? How does it work?
You know, when somebody saw the play during one of the rehearsals, they said a very beautiful thing afterward, they said: I just realized that the entire play was in English! He said that you guys were speaking English in such Indian accents that it felt like it was not English at all! Now, this was a deliberate attempt by Amitosh. He always said that we want to have vernacular dialects in the English that we are speaking. We don't want to make it an English, English play. It is that freedom that worked. Everybody does whatever they want to, while remaining true to the character. The process was that Amitosh always told us to do whatever we felt like doing. He would edit what did not go with the play. I found a very beautiful device when I came to Amitosh's group – how to build your own character. I had always worked with directors who told me what to do. Amitosh never did that; I had to find things I could do with my character. I had to think and perform, and he would cancel or approve it.
When you switch to Marathi for a bit during MIDDLE-CLASS DREAM, did he ask you to do that?
We did it while improvising. During our show at Rangshila Theatre, I had taken on a very wimpy, tiresome bearing for my character. That was something we decided to do on the day of the show. My character was not like that till the show before: it was a confident queen. One day before the show, during rehearsals, he said, do something new, let's see. I experimented with this character, and he said it's working. It feels like you are a very middle-class housewife who only makes tea for guests who come home, asks how many rotis they will have. But when she is in love, when she is having an extra-marital affair, she suddenly blossoms. That is working for me, let's do it in this show. Because at the end of the day, she is a “middle-class” queen.
This is one of Shakespeare's most popular plays, but this version is experimental. Then you are doing a play like SUNDAR MEE HONAAR, which is quite commercial. What is the difference between the two for you?
Very difficult to say. Sometimes, commercial work comes with a lot of matter-of-fact approaches by everybody. It comes down to a very commercial point of view. The attitudes of working as well. For example, when we go for the rehearsals of MAHANAGAR, if the rehearsal is at 2pm, we arrive at 1:45pm. We will change, warm up, 2-2:30pm, we will do the body warm-up, 2:30-3pm, we will do our vocal warm-up, then from 3pm, our rehearsal will start.
During a commercial play, we don't rehearse before every show. It is a completely different approach. But because I did Amitosh's plays for a year, I enjoyed doing this. I found my process while working with Amitosh. That process is not dependent on anybody else. I didn't wait for the director to tell me what to do. I designed my character traits. Then the director said to do this, not that.
Do you find doing both experimental and commercial theatre together necessary for an actor to bloom?
It is very necessary. Especially for an actor like me who's never done any schooling for acting. I have done workshops with Vijaya Mehta, Satyadev Dubey, with Adishakti in Pondicherry. But I've never been to a school where, rigorously for two months, I am working on myself, on my body, wherein it can show. See, experimental plays also have lesser shows. So, you make a lot of effort but there are few shows. Luckily, I worked on myself a lot and then I could incorporate all that work into performing, because I am doing 8-10 commercial shows every month. I prepared, I was working on my body as my instrument, on my mind, my voice – I was in it, I was in the grind. And then I got a commercial play, so I got to apply all of this multiplied by 10 in every show. That was a beautiful journey. Now when I do a show, I am in that mood during SUNDAR MEE HONAAR: When can I start? Let's take my line!
Do you find the experimental and commercial theatre audience to be different, too? If the audiences were swapped, would you get the same appreciation?
I feel, yes. There is an open space in experimental theatre. If the commercial audience watches an experimental play, they will be delighted. Even the experimental crowd approves of commercial theatre. Plays like DEVBABHLI, they are being recognized and how!
Let's talk about the beginning of your journey as a theatre actor. I watched you first act in our residential colony Shastri Hall's musical adaptation of THE LION KING – RAJA SINVHA during Ganpati when we were children. You were a deer dancing to the song ‘Chapal chapal charan charan taaku bhuwari' (Let's put our quick hooves on the ground) This adaptation was later staged professionally, too!
I'll tell you what a small world it is! I was promoting a movie the other day where a politician was also present. His public relations officer was a boy who used to play the camel in RAJA SINVHA!
Can you talk more about the theatre culture you saw in Shastri Hall that drew you to theatre?
I think the most important idea back then was that you are not only born to do academics. And that attitude was extremely prominent, especially in my house, because everyone was an artist (parents are classical singer Arati Ankalikar-Tikekar and actor Uday Tikekar). Even though my grandfather was an advocate, he sang, played the violin, the table, the harmonium, he did everything. Not just in my house, even in the community, art and extra-curricular activities were always considered at par with academics.
Every Marathi artiste has performed at Shastri Hall – Prashant Damle, Dilip Prabhavalkar, Vandana Gupte – name any prominent Marathi artist from the past 100 years, they have performed during Ganpati in our colony. Not just that, singers – Manik Verma, Anand Bhate – you name them, they have performed there. That is a big deal. To be born into such a culturally rich community, it was a given that we would put up a play every year for Ganpati. For that matter, even in school, the teachers always said, “Send Tikekar for the competition.” At home, my parents believed I would do the necessary studying, but that I should also perform.
When did you start acting?
In Shastri Hall, I began acting in plays in Ganpati since 4th grade. When I was in 7th grade, we did RAJA SINVHA, Vinay Apte cast me in (popular Marathi TV series) Abhaalmaya. At the same time, I started doing theatre in school, where I performed in a play called DOGHI and there, I won best actor in an inter-school competition.
After school, I moved to Pune. The city contributed to my theatre life a lot. I was at Fergusson College for two years, out of which one year I did the Purushottam Karandak, then Firodiya. In Pune there's a culture of inter-collegiate ekankika (one-act play) competitions – Purushottam Karandak in August, Sakal Karandak in January and the Firodia Karandak in February. Purushottam is strictly theatre, Firodia has musicals, multiple art competitions. When I went to law college for my undergraduate degree, I competed in all three for five years straight.
Everybody who comes from Pune has participated in these competitions – Sagar Deshmukh, Praveen Kharde, Vaibhav Tatwavadi, Mrunmayee Deshpande, Siddharth Chandekar. Pune has a much smaller theatre community, so it is much more accessible. Everybody knows everybody, everybody works together. You can experiment, try something new in these competitions, not fall for what is expected of you.
I did experimental theatre during my master's degree. When I was almost 25, I decided I wanted to act professionally. I had done a play called PRICE TAG and got Zee's award for Best Actress. At the same time, I got into New York University for a Master of Science degree in Global Affairs. But then when I got the award here, people started asking me whether I wanted to do this. My parents sat me down and said, “You are in the business of giving and receiving love and happiness. Are you sure you want to leave this and go? What do you want?” And then I decided to stay.
I anchored a musical play called GOSHTA EKA KALACHI and I travelled worldwide for the shows. Then I did a commercial play called 103, then DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY. Only in the last three years, I didn't do much theatre. And now to make up for it, I am doing three plays at a time!
Going forward, what kind of projects are you looking for?
I really want to do musicals. Someday, I want to do a musical solo act. A multi-lingual musical solo act. I would love to do more experimental theatre, work with the greats: Kumud Mishra, Seema Pahwa, Manoj Joshi, Manav Kaul. If I could and if God lets me, I would do three shows a day, 365 days a year, for the rest of my life.
*Neha Shende. is an avid theatre goer and enjoys watching old Bollywood movies in her free time.
