Sanjna and summertime

You can't possibly have an uninterrupted conversation with Sanjna Kapoor if you're sitting at the Prithvi Cafe.
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From thespians to the guys behind the food counter to the kids attending the workshops to the regulars lolling around with laptops everyone's vying for the lady's attention.



And they're all warmly greeted with a 1000 watt smile or a hug or a 'how are you?' or all of the above. Sanjna, who is all tied up with the Summertime workshops at Prithvi,u00a0 talks to CS about making Mumbai more theatre conscious:

Workshop lift
The idea for the workshops came to me in the early 1990s when the standard of plays was abysmal and the audience was extremely crass.
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I felt a desperate need to reach out to the younger generation in an effort to make them more discerning and aware of art and culture. The purpose of these workshops is not to convert children into theatre actors (that would be a bonus), but to make them more appreciative of theatre. That's my dream for Mumbai.

Play on
Yes, the city has become more appreciative of theatre over the years. But our biggest drawback is that we don't have theatres near our homes. In London, you can't escape theatre, there's one around every corner.
And, we don't take pride in what we have.
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I'd heard so much about a cultural centre in Dadar, but when I recently visited that place, I was shocked to see a wedding happening at the venue.

Mumbai has the necessary software to make it a hub for art and culture, unlike say Delhi. But it's worrying for me to think that there still isn't a place like Prithvi in the city. But that's probably because we're not a financial success. If we were, we'd have had copiers.

Act 1
People say that I'm among the few actors to have switched to theatre after working in films. It's usually the other way round. But the fact is that I always wanted to be an actor, and films seemed like the best idea given my family background. I met Ketan Mehta, who offered me a role in Hero Hiralal, a crossover film. I really didn't know how to act, but I enjoyed the filming because I was in awe of Naseeruddin Shah.

Then in 1989, I attended a workshop at the Herbert Berghoff School in New York that changed my focus to theatre. And while I got a tremendous kick from being on stage, I couldn't ignore the actor-manager side of me. I guess I had that in my DNA. And that's what I've become now an administrator. Maybe in my next life I'll learn to act too.