After making his mark across films, streaming platforms and theatre as an actor, Pratik Gandhi recently made his debut as a full-fledged director for the third season of a play titled Saat Teri Ekvees, which was staged in Ahmedabad on Sunday. The Gujarati-language play, a compilation of seven monologues themed on the desires and hopes of women, saw him directing his wife, actor Bhamini Oza Gandhi, for the first time.
Talking about his experience of working with her, Pratik says, “Bhamini and I have creatively collaborated in the past, and it works wonderfully for both of us. In Saat Teri Ekvees, she almost co-directed all the monologues with me. It’s very easy for us to communicate with each other, be it about individual performances or even about the things that we dislike and don’t agree on.”
Quiz him about how they navigated through creative differences while working on the play, and the Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story (2020) actor shares, “There weren’t any this time around. But if one of us liked something and the other felt that it might not work out, we shared our opinions, point blank. It’s a very comfortable space, where we can creatively express ourselves freely.”
Pratik met Bhamini for the first time during the famous Prithvi Theatre Festival in Mumbai back in 2006. “That’s also one of the reasons why theatre is very, very special to me. Bhamini also shares a equal amount of passion for theatre,” he adds.
But direction, though “an interesting mental exercise”, was no cakewalk for him and it required him to unlearn the process of approaching a play. He elaborates, “As a director, I learnt to let go because I couldn’t control the actors from behind the stage. I also made it a point to not over-direct any actor because I didn’t want to limit their creativity. I’m an actor first and when I see another actor reading a script before me, I tend to constantly give my inputs. That’s a natural reaction that comes from within me, but when I directed, I made sure that I didn’t perform for my actors. I just spoke to them and helped them get a better understanding of their characters.”
