The cat in the hats

If friends and filmmakers want to contact filmmaker, actor and theatre director Rajat Kapoor, they have to either drop him an e-mail or call him on the landline. Networking be damned, Rajat Kapoor is happy being an oddity in the age of the cell phone. "It is not a big deal," he says. "Life is much simpler without it [a mobile]." A small, tattered red diary holds the phone numbers of his family and friends. But that too is just a back-up plan. He has committed them to memory.

Rajat Kapoor has never held anything sacred. Thus Hamlet becomes A Clown Prince, King Lear is Nothing Like Lear, As You Like It turns into I Don't Like It, As You Like It and Macbeth is What's Done, is Done, all Shakespearean plays given a comical twist, by clowns often talking gibberish and sometimes even breakdancing and singing. When he directs films, he creates heroes who are vulnerable, always on the margins, struggling to fit in because of their tendency to question (Bauji in Ankhon Dekhi) or stand out (Sudeep in Fatso!). When Kapoor himself has been in front of the camera, it is to essay characters with shades of grey, be it the unsettling uncle in Monsoon Wedding or the hapless husband and father in Kapoor & Sons. Few in the world of theatre and films can attempt such a variety of roles and responsibilities with the assuredness that Kapoor does. And if you think he is overwhelmed with the many hats he wears, think again. "I feel I am the luckiest person in the world because I'm doing what I like doing," he says.

In June, What's Done, is Done returns after a gap of six months, only its second show, with the most star-studded cast ever for an Indian play. Ranvir Shorey, Kalki Koechlin, Vinay Pathak, Jim Sarbh (Neerja), Tillottama Shome (Qissa) are just a few of the actors who come together for what Kalki calls an "intense play with funny bits". "Working with Rajat is not everybody's cup of tea," says Shorey, one of the few to be directed by Kapoor in both films and theatre. "An actor is like a blind man who is slowly going to find his vision."

Kapoor's plays are devised pieces developed in collaboration with the actors in two to three months of rehearsals. "It is a great process to not know where you are going with it," says Kapoor, about his method. "I really believe what you come across accidentally can often be great or new or innovative. Instinct is all." Situations are given and actors asked to improvise. "He becomes more of an observer," says Kalki, who has also worked with him in Hamlet: The Clown Prince and plays his daughter in the indie film Mantra. "He leaves the exploration entirely to actors. He picks stuff until the last minute and chops quite ruthlessly. Half the time a director's job is to be diplomatic but he doesn't give a shit about diplomacy. It can be quite a hit to the [actor's] ego." The bound script emerges only after a few shows.

That has only made Pathak, his co-star in Bheja Fry and friend of two decades, a bigger admirer of Kapoor's work. "He is always challenging you," says Pathak. "He knows what is not working. He is constantly deconstructing things." This integrity makes Kapoor one of the more versatile artistes but it may also be the reason why his talent, especially as a storyteller, has often gone unrecognised.

Twenty-five years since he first moved to Mumbai, Kapoor is back in Bandra, where he now lives with his wife, production designer Meenal Aggarwal and two children. His one-room office is sparsely decorated, with too many books-among them works of Shakespeare, Jean Genet and even a few Hindi writers such as Amrutlal Nagar-and posters of Federico Fellini's Amarcord and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. The spiral- bound scripts are proof of how Kapoor is Hindi cinema's quintessential independent, struggling filmmaker. His first film, Private Detective: Two Plus Two Plus One, made in 1997 and influenced by the work of Kumar Shahani, one of his mentors, never made it to theatres. "Everything about making films is super fun-the solitary process of writing, the chaos of shooting with a hundred people, the lack of sleep and the quiet of editing-except raising money," says Kapoor who has made six films in 15 years, none making an impressionable dent at the box office. Kapoor grew up fascinated with the works of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, something that would later manifest itself in the prominence of mime in his plays. He was a member of the Chingari group in Delhi, where he made his debut directing The Company Theatre's founder Atul Kumar in Max Frisch's Firebugs. The passion for cinema took him away for three years to the Film & Television Institute of India, Pune, where he studied direction and was exposed to the cinema of Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani, filmmakers he identifies as his mentors. Like them, he doesn't want to "lose [creative] control over" his films. Stars are also not paramount in his world. "Maybe that's why it has never worked out with a big studio." By his own admission, he cribs "a little more than the others" but he doesn't see his struggle as any different from Sanjay Leela Bhansali's. He too is a stickler for his own vision.

"The film outlives you whereas theatre dies every day," says Kapoor, explaining why the two mediums couldn't be more different. He believes Ankhon Dekhi deserved better. R. Balki, who has directed Paa and Ki & Ka, too thinks it was an exemplary Hindi film which needed to be marketed better. "He has so realistically and candidly presented a philosophical thought," he says. "It is such a beautifully crafted film. I wish it is re-released."

Kapoor wishes his actors and his go-to cinematographer Rafey Mahmood and wife Meenal were validated for their work. "He understands the uniqueness of each medium, but cinema is more up his alley," says Shorey, who has appeared in Mixed Doubles, Fatso! and Kapoor's best work to-date, the overlooked Mithya. Slumdog Millionaire's Oscar-winning sound designer, Resul Pookutty, who's been Kapoor's collaborator since his first film, believes the world will better understand his cinema later. "He has a distinctive view and truthful resonance about the time we live in," he says.

Till then, there is always theatre with his company Cinematograph. He hardly misses any show. "The joy of theatre is quite unmatched," says Kapoor. "You keep changing the play and travelling with it. You keep coming closer to the group you have formed." Ask him if he is tired of the clowns-Shakespeare pairing, and he says, "Nobody asked Alfred Hitchcock, do you not want to make romantic comedies or musicals, or why doesn't Chaplin do something else?" In theatre, he may be the celebrated star but he won't give up being the valiant soldier fighting the battle in cinema. He has three scripts ready, and one he is currently developing. The bard will have to take a backseat for a few years. "This year, I am going to make a film one way or the other," Kapoor declares. More power to him.