The beautiful imperfections of improv

Rasika Dugal on trying something new with Fairy Folk

The concept of work-life balance is lost on Rasika Dugal, who has been juggling several projects at once. She just wrapped up the third season of Mirzapur, Gaurav Chawla and Ananya Banerjee’s Adhura, and is now busy promoting her latest film, Fairy Folk, that has been making festival rounds. After bagging the gong for Best Performance at the Yellow Stone International Film Festival, Dugal says Fairy Folk will go to the Chicago International Film Festival on October 23.

“I don’t know if I am doing a good job of balancing work with rest. We plan things to go one way and hope to take breaks between two projects, but my dates are all over the place,” starts off Dugal, who is paired opposite husband Mukul Chadda in the Karan Gour-directed film. Having worked with Gour in her first film, Kshay (2011) as the lead, the decision to hop aboard Fairy Folk was an easy move, especially when she learned that the director planned to adopt the improvisation format.

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Rasika Dugal and Mukul Chadda in Fairy Folk

The film dictates no rehearsals, doesn’t have pre-written dialogues and is shot “in linear” format. “It was a new exercise for all of is, and it has been an exhilarating experience,” says the actor, adding, “While there is enough structure to every scene, what exactly transpires in it was not scripted at all. Every scene would have a four-line description, which explained the purpose of the scene. It had no lines.” While most films adapt the schedule as per the location, for Fairy Folk, the process was different. “Since we didn’t know what would happen in the next scene, we would often go back to a location to shoot a scene. We shot six scenes at Film City and each time it came back in the story, we went back to the location,” she explains.

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There is a reason why dialogue writers are a mandate in filmmaking, but Gour decided to let the actors improvise their own words according to the scene. “There are so many beautiful imperfections in the way we communicate, which tells you something about a person. It is not exactly articulate or logical. We all worked together with an improv group [to get used to the concept]. It was a fun space,” adds Dugal.

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