SANJAY TALWAR
Star of Aquarius Theatre production says The Invisible Hand looks at ‘corruption, in us and in everyone’
Sanjay Talwar is far from invisible.
An imposing man with a strong presence, he’s created illuminating characters at both Stratford and Shaw festivals.
Born in Halifax, Talwar is of Pakistani descent. You wouldn’t mistake him for former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark, but last season that’s who Talwar played at Shaw Festival, starring in Michael Healey’s new play, “1979.”
“Now, that was non-traditional casting,” Talwar grins. “Thank goodness both Shaw and Stratford have moved away from a homogenized look. They’ve gone to something more like the way streets of Canadian cities really look. They’ve opened the field for actors who look different. Does that work? Mostly yes.”
Talwar agrees he doesn’t like the phrase colour-blind casting.
“I’m not a fan of that term,” he says. “What does it mean? Are we not supposed to notice an actor’s skin colour? There’s something wrong about that. And there’s really no such thing as colourblind casting, anyway.
“When a story is about a person’s background, or their colour, one has to be hyperconscious of that. But it all comes down to having the right person in the role. Then it’s up to the actor. If you’re good, that’s all that should matter.”
Talwar, an honour student in high school, was heading into science when he switched allegiance to drama.
“I was a backstage type at first, but when I had to go on in a play I had a life-altering experience. I was on stage when someone missed a scene. That person had all the lines. What was I going to do? Make them up, of course. I suddenly realized what being in
the moment was really about.”
Talwar graduated from the theatre program at Dalhousie University in 1988.
Since then, he’s appeared in diverse plays from the American drama “Come Back, Little Sheba” to the British triumph “Arcadia,” and the Canadian play “Helen’s Necklace.”
When we talked, he had just begun rehearsals at Theatre Aquarius for “The Invisible Hand,” a tense thriller about politics, banking and the kind of greed that can drive big business.
“We live in a world where the left and right can’t talk to each other. There’s an ideology about helping the poor, for instance,
but of course that means spending money. Each side has very different ideas.”
“The play is about a journey two characters take,” Talwar says. “We see where they start and where they end up. And we see how what they think and do affects other people. The resolution is left to the audience. When
a corporation makes millions of dollars, serious things happen. The play is about how money can affect ideology. It’s about corruption, in us and in everyone. It’s also about looking at someone ‘foreign-looking’ and thinking he or she is an extremist.”
Talwar plays Imam Saleem, an activist leader of a mosque. He’s found the corruption of his government in Pakistan. He tries to deal with it.
“The play is smart, without being too intellectual. There are lots of messages here. What you take away might well depend on the attitudes you brought to the theatre with you.”
Ayad Akhtar, The Invisible Hand’s playwright, has had big New York successes with “Disgraced” and “Junk,” plays that challenge the status quo. He looks at the fallout of denying your race and religion to make vast amounts of money. For Akhtar, denying your cultural and religious roots is a disgrace.
“The Invisible Hand” explores such themes in the guise of a tense thriller. It questions a system where currency is everything. It looks at the way idealism disintegrates in the face of profit.
And guess what, Sanjay Talwar is happy to be playing a Muslim Pakistani in a play that in part at least looks at racial stereotypes.