Lola Kutty excited to stage her first script

“This is the first time that I’m writing a script and it is something of a test for me. Take 35 is a monologue that portrays the struggles of a child actor who hasn’t quite made it in adulthood. This piece was a challenge for me because I was both writing and performing and the line between the character and me was a very thin and ambiguous one. I often caught myself writing into the character’s dialogues phrases that are distinctly from my vocabulary and had no place in hers. So, keeping track of that difference and enduring my writing stuck to the right side of the line was a difficult process,” says Anu.

Anu wrote the piece specifically for the upcoming 11th edition of The Park’s New Festival organised by Prakriti Foundation. “I was working on my upcoming Stand-up special when Ranvir Shah, the curator of the festival, approached me. He wanted me to do something original for the festival. This is when I decided to take up the story of a fictional child actor and her later life as the concept. I had been thinking about the subject for a while. Their identity as a child actor is something that these people can never shed. For example, Shalini came into the film industry as this endearing child artiste and became very popular. 

Today she is a full grown woman and, yet, we still refer to her as ‘Baby’ Shalini. People still identify them as their younger selves. Similarly, I still can’t think of Sana Saeed of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai as a mainstream adult actress. To me, she is still the little girl who is Rani Mukherji’s daughter,” she explains.

Referring to a recent encounter she had with a child actor, she adds, “I met a seven-year-old girl recently during a make-up session and was shocked to find that she had a very clear idea about the amount of blush she wanted, the tint of lipstick that was to be used and so on. This young child had achieved with great ease these sets of skills that I was still struggling to master even in my 30s! 

These are some of the things that these child actors pick up. But there are certain parts of the child actor’s life that I found disturbing as well. This is especially true of the amount of pressure the parents put these children through. I mean what three-year old talks about ‘Terms and Conditions’ or ‘16 per cent reduction in car prices.’ Just think about the kind of stress they go through to learn their lines! I have tried to incorporate all of these elements into the monologue, making sure that the focus was on the personal story of this particular character. I don’t want to paint all child actors in a broad stroke with my piece.” 

She will exhibit her piece in Chennai on September 1 and then perform it in five more cities — Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengalurur — as part of the festival. Meanwhile, Anu says she is simultaneously working on her Stand-up special, which she hopes to finish by November.