Rang De Basanti (FILM)
A seminal film, both for Indian culture and Indian cinema. Rang De Basanti is, for me, the finest Indian film I’ve ever watched. It is about a group of young friends from Delhi making a film with a British filmmaker who has ancestral ties to India. The past and the present collide as they try and tell a story about history, justice, and what human beings are capable of in the face of tragedy. When all control is taken from us, what do we do?
The film is full of passionate performances, brilliant music, poignant writing, but what really makes it all come together is how epic and sprawling it is. You feel like you’re watching history unfold and you are compelled to care because the characters in the film are so fleshed out and lovable. This is a film we discussed in our rehearsal room for Testmatch, as it contains a lot of themes our play explores as well.
The play, in a similar vein, really personalises a story that can seem too far back in time and too vast for us to properly grasp. It makes you care about the story it tells not because it’s the right thing to do, or because you think you should, but because you want to.
Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden (POEM)
I don’t know if this is my favourite poem in the world or not, but there’s something about it that unfailingly moves me every single time I read it. I love using poetry for character work on acting jobs, and I’ve used this poem as inspiration for nearly every single character I’ve ever played. I suppose it just shows you how universal grief is- and how loss permeates every aspect of our existence. It shades everything in life.
I have this poem written in my character workbook for “India One", one of the two characters I play in Testmatch. She’s the captain of the Indian cricket team, and she’s bloody good. But she has found her relationship with her sport evolving into something somewhat painful and warped over time, and this poem encapsulates for me the sense of loss she feels about cricket, as it’s consumed her life for so long; similarly to how I feel about acting.
Who would she be without it? Who would I?
The Aviator (FILM)
A good, not a great film. But one which the experience of watching changed my life forever. I must’ve been 14 or 15, in India, and I’d been really miserable at school as all I wanted to do was be an actor, so attending classes felt like a waste of time. I got into a really unhealthy pattern of therefore not attending them and staying home and watching films on T.V. as I felt they taught me more.
One day, The Aviator started playing on HBO. I suppose it was the alchemy of my unhappiness and desire to be affected by art in a meaningful way, but by the time the credits were rolling, I was leaning on the floor in front of the TV, my face inches away from the screen, silent tears streaming down my face, and my hand gingerly skimming the black screen.
I had been moved, my life had changed, and I knew I couldn’t want any longer to pursue my dreams. I just had to do it. It wasn’t more than a few weeks after this that I started assisting a director in Bombay, as a way of getting started in the industry.
“The Way of the Future”, the last line spoken in the film, burns in my memory always like fire.
Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (FILM)
Not the greatest Indian film ever made, but one that’s certainly my absolute favourite. The unabashed romance, melodrama, beauty, magic of it- it’s all completely undeniable. This film is considered by many to be the most successful Bollywood film ever made, and one that turned Shah Rukh Khan into a global sensation.
The fabric of my childhood would be incomplete without this film, and without him as that hero with his arms wide open. It is a cultural touchstone, and makes you fall in love with its characters, with Switzerland, with the fields of Punjab, and, of course, Shah Rukh.
Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan McMillan (PLAY)
This is a gorgeous play by Duncan McMillan. It is about grief and it is about life, and how they are both terrible and beautiful and everything in between. I saw it being performed by the truly fantastic Jonny Donahoe. But what makes it so special is the story behind my experience with it. I’d just moved to London to train at Drama Centre, where every week, they’d take us on a theatre trip.
I was finally doing what I wanted to do and I’d never been more fulfilled. Our first trip to the theatre was to the Orange Tree. And the play we were seeing was Every Brilliant Thing. I cried, I laughed, and I felt so utterly thankful to be alive and to be trying to make sense of the world through my work. A few years later, I’m making my stage debut at the Orange Tree with Testmatch, and it feels like coming full circle.
Narcissus and Goldmund by Hermann Hesse (BOOK)
A story of teaching, learning, truth, and fulfilment. Can a teacher lead his pupil to it? This is a book I read in 2020. I’d just finished a term of drama school through CoVID, and it had been an extraordinarily difficult year. In September, during a brief window of relaxed restrictions, I travelled to Italy by myself. I read this while I was in Venice and I will never forget the moment I finished it, over some bruschetta.
Since childhood, I have always been very influenced by my teachers and been fortunate enough to have had some fantastic ones. Mona ma’am in the third grade, Jean-Pierre in the eighth. The list goes on. The time when I read this book was when I had been feeling like my life had been falling apart due to the unpredictability of the pandemic and how it was affecting my training, which I cared so very deeply about.
At the time, the only thing I cared about. I had given over everything to it, and to the pursuit of this craft, and now it was beginning to unravel. It was through the teaching, focus, and kindness of my teachers at Drama Centre that I felt I was able to continue moving forward: even if it was through Zoom.
It’s been a real privilege to have found a similar figure in our director for Testmatch Diane, a fearless leader, who pushes us hard but is also kind. This book has also been on my mind recently as the central character in it goes on a very difficult journey, and I have used it as inspiration for the second character I play in Testmatch: Messenger.
He too sets off travelling, from Bangalore to Bengal, and is confronted with some bitter truths: about his country, his people, and himself. What it means to be human. How to make the people in power see this humanity. I don’t have the answer, neither does the character, but this book certainly takes us one step closer to finding it.
Testmatch runs from the April 20th to May 18th 2024, tickets can be found here.
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