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Recently ‘Black Coffee Productions’, a theatre group from Bangalore, headed by Preetam Koilpillai was in Mumbai with a play adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel Filth. Talking to us about the play, about acting and about the Bangalore theatre scene is Rajeev Ravindranathan, the sole and seasoned actor of FILTH. While his day job designation is creative director at the ad agency, Saatchi & Saatchi in Bangalore, at night he attempts to become another person; in this case a sociopathic cop who succumbs to the complete and total degeneration of his body and mind.
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Deepa Punjani
Is FILTH the first play that Black Coffee Productions has staged in Mumbai? How was the experience?
Yes. The experience was very humbling. I've watched phenomenal plays and performers on the Prithvi stage and being part of its rich heritage is a matter of great pride and honour for me.
 You seem to have invested a lot of time and energy in preparing for Bruce Robertson's part. How did you go about preparing for the role?
Preetam (founder of Black Coffee Productions and Director of FILTH) and I are maniacs. The first time we did FILTH, we put it together – rewrote it from cockney to the Queen's English, edited it, designed it, rehearsed it – in 3 weeks flat. During this time I underwent a transformation as an actor. I became aware of both my limitations and a latent knack for this stuff. Acting in manipulative and that is both an exhilarating and scary feeling. You must know how to exercise that power and when to rein it in. A play like FILTH will change you in some way. It is guttural and very raw. It deals with emotions in such extreme that one can't rely on experiential memory. Each and every performance churns my insides since it can be replicated, but must be recreated every time to capture the rawness of the script.
The accents that I use in the play came to me naturally since I love mimicking accents – a habit I picked up watching Brit and American sitcoms as a kid. The rest was me jumping into the deep end of a pool and hoping I wouldn't sink. 3 years later I've moved on to the butterfly stroke.
In my opinion, you have sort of managed to play the character convincingly. Did you ever feel you were taking a risk for playing a character whose cultural context is far removed from yours?
I think I've answered a lot of this question above. However I beg to differ with your statement. I don't believe I have played the character convincingly. Audiences enjoyed the performance but I don't believe I put them in the catch-22 position that the script wants to put them in. Should they hate this character or pity him or both? Is that possible? I believe this character is a fine example of a ludicrous paradox. And while I'm glad I entertained audiences, I'm also regretful of not putting them in a difficult position.
When I say that you play the character quite convincingly, I mean that you are able to portray the character in his shades of gray. If one were to end up with a black or white kind of a viewpoint then I am afraid that the very purpose of the script and the character in it would be defeated.
Black and White are enemies of Filth. The play thrives on paradoxes and wrenching contradictory reactions out of people. In that sense, attempting Filth is a risky business. There are so many ways to go wrong with it and only one way to get it right.
Acting per se is fraught with such risk. And I love it. That’s why I try and play characters who are quite unlike me and are faced with situations quite unlike that I have faced. I feel much more challenged and much more rewarded when I can create an alternate reality out of a playwright's words. It is too easy playing someone closer to who I am. Of course, the core emotions that human beings go through are universal which makes it a bit easier to attach an emotional context to what I do on stage. Acting just wouldn't be acting if it were safe.
The brogue that you have adopted to play Robertson's part works positively as well as negatively, the negative part being the lack of clarity in bits and parts of the play. I was wondering if it would have been better for you to stick to the way you normally speak English…
I think that would have made it a little easier for the audience. But I also think that FILTH’S beauty lies in the fact that you start watching it from the outside in - a play about this cop in an alien land. But as it unfolds you're unwittingly sucked into a vortex of conflicting emotions. And you're forced to question a lot of your own beliefs and prejudices. I think had we thought of getting Robertson to speak with an Indian English accent, it would have messed up the geography of the play. It is important for the audience to disassociate with the play at the beginning and then get drawn in later. Also as I've learnt, audiences are quite entertained by the myriad accents.
While I appreciate your point about trying to root the character in his culture I am not sure of how the effect would have been were you to speak the way you normally do. The way I see it now is that while your effort at keeping up with the accent and the accompanying action is remarkable, it somehow still inhibits the audience to get under the character’s skin. In essence, your attempt is worthy but it seems to take up all your energy.
It does take up a lot of energy and concentration. But then that’s what the script demands. I do not lay claim to faultless performances and if the accent seems to have hindered your viewing pleasure, I’m to blame for a less than adequate show. I firmly believe there are only two ways for Filth to work:1, set in Edinburgh as it is and 2, completely adapted to an Indian milieu. The latter is something Preetam and I have been considering and might even do, once we get requisite permissions. Anything middle of the road will end up just that, middle of the road.
You say you have spent three years doing FILTH. Would you say that the time that you have spent doing the play has helped you become closer to the character? What were your first few shows of the play like?
The first few shows were primarily a physical challenge. 2 hours of FILTH are enough to send any person crazy I think. But over time as I grew to understand the character, I began to empathize with him. I still think he's a terrible monster but once I began to understand the motivations for his behaviour I became more emotionally involved with the play and his story. It then became my mission to move beyond entertaining an audience to drawing them into this complex world and making them feel what I felt for the character. However it hasn't been easy doing in 2 hours what's taken me 3 years.
Besides FILTH, which are the other plays that you have acted in?
I started in Class 3 playing a middle-aged man giving away his daughter’s hand in marriage. Then there was a Zulu Warrior and Prthviraj Chauhan in school, regular trysts with the stage in college till my first ticketed show in Bangalore with Ayn Rand’s THE NIGHT OF JANUARY 16th. Some of my more enjoyable performances have been Edward Albee’s ZOO STORY, Mahesh Elkunchwar’s LOST REFLECTION (HARAVLELE PRATIBIMB) and Bill Manhoff’s THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT (which I consider one of the finest sitcoms ever written).
You have been associated with Black Coffee Productions for five years now. Is it the only group you are associated with or do you work with other theatre groups too?
I started off with a couple of smaller groups and then worked in a few BLT productions. But in Preetam I met someone who had both the balls and the intuition to do theatre that incited a reaction – whether positive or negative. The plays Black Coffee did always forced an audience to sit up and feel something. And that's very important for me as a performer. I like to feel the energy flow between me and the audience. It sort of makes the performance interactive and live. Also Preetam being an accomplished pianist, approaches every play as though it were a piece of music. I've learnt so much about pacing, sound and energy from this unique and refreshing style of direction.
Recently, a couple of friends and I have set up a banner called Altered Ego. We're not sure what to do with it but we do know we'd like to produce entertainment, particularly new work – whether that's music, theatre, film or stand-up comedy.
Any future plays on the cards?
I’ve been toying with a few plays I’d like to direct. But the actor in me is all refreshed after this recent run of Filth. In any case, crazy work schedules demand that I take a break from theatre for some months. Hopefully by then the two buggers would have sorted out their issues.
How would you regard the theatre scene in Bangalore?
Bangalore's theatre scene is sporadic. While Kannada theatre is an established and professional set-up with a dedicated serious audience, English theatre is an eclectic mix of veterans, showmen, serious enthusiasts and pre-adolescents who'll get on stage and do just about anything. I'm not referring to the last few productions featuring children; I've heard those were delightful. It's the unqualified little boys and girls I'm worried about. They'll scare off genuine theatre audiences who sample their half-baked tripe for Rs.100 and then get put off English theatre altogether. There are a couple of theatre companies who consistently put out good work, workshops and the like. I think it's the responsibility of theatres and their managements to keep the riff-raff off their stages and preserve the sanctity of the performing space. Surely a group's performance history or at least the individual's last few exploits should be all that earns him or her the right to perform in a respected space. That’s the only way a system will take shape. Right now, it’s a free-for-all. Have rich Uncle as sponsor, know someone in theatre office, take photocopy of script and voila – you have a play.
*The above interview has been conducted by Deepa Punjani; Editor of this site, a theatre critic and an academic keenly interested in Theatre and Performance Studies. The review of FILTH is also available on this site.
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