Most of Amol Palekar’s screen characters were set up for failure in matters important to middle-class India in the ’70s. In securing a job, in office romance, in getting a house, he began with a disadvantage, always on the brink of losing the girl, the job, and the promotion.
Eventually, he won all — nobly. Three decades after Independence, if middle-class white-collar India looked to any actor for films actually related to their lives — and which held out hope that the straight and the narrow, with some bit of external help (office union, reference letter, love coach), would give them a good life — it was Palekar.
What saved his Sanjay (Rajnigandha, 1974), Arun (Chhoti Si Baat, 1976), Vinod (Chitchor, 1976), Sudeep (Gharaonda, 1977) and Ramprasad Sharma (Gol Maal, 1979), however, from being just goody two shoes was Palekar’s comic talent that matched the emotional depth of the stories told. That many of the characters also showed a certain slipperiness, open to white lies and compromise to get ahead, can be credited in no small measure to Palekar’s acting range.
From Shyam Benegal to middle-of-the-road directors such as Basu Chatterjee and Hrishikesh Mukherjee — many of whom followed his parallel career in theatre – he was the hero and the anti-hero, and the many shades in between, of their cinema.
Palekar’s career in theatre is as old as his career in films. Announced on March 10, he will receive the META award for lifetime achievement on March 25 at the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards night at Delhi’s Kamani Auditorium. Excerpts from a conversation with him:
You used to be a bank employee before you entered theatre and then cinema. How did you come into the orbit of greats of the stage like Satyadev Dubey? Was he your first guru in acting, and, now looking back, what are the things you can credit him with for having taught you?
How Dubey was responsible for my accidental entry into theatre or my bank job etc., is in public domain after my memoir Viewfinder was published in November 2024.
What deserves reflection is what I encountered within the process with Dubey. He was not a ‘guru’ in the conventional sense; he shaped you through provocation. He unsettled you, challenged your assumptions, and refused to let you take refuge in comfort or complacency. His influence ranged from the fundamentals of how to stand on stage, to project with clarity, to a deeper understanding of production design, including set and sound. He gave me my first acting role in Chup Court Chalu Hain, and pushed me towards directing my first play, Vallabhpurchi Danta Katha.
What I learnt from him went beyond acting. It was about rigour, honesty, and an uncompromising engagement with the text. He also opened for me a wide landscape of Indian literature across languages, urging me to translate and stage those works in Hindi and Marathi. He insisted that one must remain true to one’s theatrical instincts, without the anxiety of pleasing the audience. He insisted that your performance ought to be intense even for three people in the auditorium. That ethical foundation has stayed with me far more deeply than any technique.
When it comes to the stage, who are your other gurus, besides Dubey?
Beyond Dubey, I have had the privilege of being influenced by several remarkable practitioners of the stage. In my memoir Viewfinder, I have taken the opportunity to acknowledge this debt more fully. It is, in many ways, a tribute to stalwarts such as Shombhu Mitra, Amrish Puri, and Badal Sircar, among others, who have shaped me, sometimes directly or from a distance, as a theatre practitioner.
Each of them expanded my understanding of theatre in a different way - whether it was Shombhuda’s intellectual rigour, Purisaab’s command over performance, or Badalda’s radical reimagining of space and audience. These were not influences one consciously imitated, but forces that quietly recalibrated one’s own practice.
In terms of choice of material to perform, acting and stagecraft, what is the different trajectory you set out for yourself?
In my choices - of material, acting, and stagecraft - I have consciously stayed away from the predictable. The uniqueness of the subject and the way the narrative unfolded was crucial.
As an actor, I was drawn to roles that unsettled me, something I had not attempted before. The challenge of entering unfamiliar emotional and performative territories was far more compelling than repeating a known grammar.
As a director, my focus lay in the subtext, the silences, the spaces between lines. These allowed for deeper exploration through the elements of theatre. Abstraction rather than a strictly linear or figurative form was my preference.
As a producer, I chose to support exploratory, experimental work, with a willingness to take risks.
In Madhobi Mukherjee’s memoir, she mentions one of the things she had to unlearn was to stop herself from prompting others, something actors would do in theatre.... What were your challenges?
In the late 1960s, the practice of prompting from the wings had already disappeared from the Marathi theatre scene. An actor was expected to know not only one’s own lines with precision, but over the course of rehearsals, one would internalise the entire text of the play. Theatre, in that sense, was a deeply immersive and continuous process.
In contrast, when I began working in films, I had to adjust to a very different discipline. One was often required to learn only the lines for the immediate shot, sometimes not even the entire scene, as filming would be broken into bits and pieces. Theatre unfolds as a whole; cinema is constructed in parts. Adapting to this fragmented method did require a shift, but it came to me naturally.
Another challenge was the non-linear nature of filmmaking. You could be asked to perform the climax at the very beginning of the shoot. To maintain continuity, one had to carefully map the internal graph of the character, ensuring emotional consistency across disjointed sequences.
What has theatre given you? How has it enriched you as a person at various levels, and helped you negotiate life and its challenges?
Theatre has given me far more than a profession; it has shaped the way I understand life. The discipline of rehearsal, the uncertainty of performance, and the constant negotiation between self and character have made me more attentive, more patient, and more accepting of life’s ambiguities.
Theatre prepares you for life. It places you in situations where control is partial and outcomes uncertain. As Peter Brook said, “Theatre is a form of knowledge; it can be a means of changing man.” For me, that change has been inward; a quiet shaping of one’s inner life, helping me face challenges with balance, without losing curiosity.
A play unfolds over a few hours, and then you step out of the character. I have perhaps carried that into life - not becoming overly attached to any moment, remaining a witness to my own flaws and limitations. It has helped me stay grounded - neither carried away by success, nor diminished by failure.
What, according to you, are the challenges that young theatre professionals today must guard against? Any present-generation playwright whose work you follow?
The context for young theatre practitioners today has changed drastically with infinite access to information. With AI, the challenge deepens. It can generate text and simulate styles, but it lacks lived experience. The risk is not replacement, but a gradual homogenisation of expression. The responsibility, therefore, is to remain rooted in one’s own voice and context.
What excites me is the work of younger actors and directors in non-mainstream cinema, and the remarkable vibrancy of Marathi experimental theatre today. Unfortunately, the mainstream theatre and cinema remain caught in the familiar pursuit of visibility and box-office success.
What are you working on now?
I am currently producing an English play written and directed by Sandhya Gokhale, in which I will also be acting. It is deeply fulfilling to remain actively engaged even at the age of 82; to continue finding meaningful work, without feeling diminished by time or displaced from the creative space.