Theatre is an art that helps you understand yourself: Sarmad Khoosat talks to Naya Daur

Sarmad Khoosat says theatre is the platform through which you can express yourself more freely than in a political rally, by creating a story and dialogue. He was talking exclusively to Naya Daur.

•   Theatre, or any other medium of storytelling,


•  is certainly very important because through them


•  you tell stories around you and the ones inside you


•  It also happens that when you look at something


•  you’ve gone through


•  from another person’s point of view,


•  you understand a lot of things about your own life


•  If you look at theatre’s history,


•  it has even contributed to revolutions


•  You can say things at a theatre that you can’t in a rally


•  with the help of a story and dialogue


•  Other visual mediums, mainly cinema and TV,


•  include many other techniques and ingredients


•  but theatre is always dialogue-heavy,


•  almost always, in the kind of theatre we practice today


•  So dialogue too is very important in life


•  I feel that we’ve stopped listening to people


•  We just want to speak and impose our opinions


•  We listen to others only to pass our remarks in response


•  But in theatre, even when you’re saying a wrong thing,


•  there’s another character that corrects you, through dialogue


•  If you’re saying the right thing, you’d have to create


•  a conflict or a conversation with another character


•  So theatre promotes dialogue


•  and I think an exercise in dialogue is important for us all


•  Moreover, we don’t have many outlets for entertainment


•  so definitely theatre is entertaining,


•  and it’s very real also


•  I think, for me, as an actor,


•  nothing can match the experience of working at theatre