‘BGRADE FILMS ARE THE UNDERBELLY OF INDIAN CINEMA’

Director Kshitish Date talks about his journey and why his play, Item, is an important social commentary

Navneet Vyasan

The Kshitish Date directorial, Item, has been turning heads in the theatre circuit for a while. He has been directing plays for almost a decade now, and his latest play, Item, recently bagged the META Award (Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Award) for the Best Play and the Best Actor. Speaking about his initial days, Kshitish says, “I started working seriously in theatre eight or nine years ago. I was in college then and I started participating in college competitions. That groomed my skills, and got me really interested.”

At first, the director was unsure on how to go about his career in theatre. He meddled with a number of things before deciding to become a director, he says, “When college ended, I was interested in acting and direction. Till then, I was working in every department. I was writing, I was in sound design, I was doing everything. In 2013, I narrowed it down to acting and direction.” He adds, “The first play I directed was a one act play titled Praani Matr, which was a 45 minute long play, but somehow won many awards. That gave me confidence to work further. From there, I kept directing plays and my second play also received a good response. That was when I realised that direction is something I should explore further. Moreover, I enjoyed the whole process.”

Item is about a woman, Sapna Shetty, who wants to make it big in the entertainment industry. In this quest, she joins ‘the BGrade film industry,’ and the tale is told through the eyes of Rakesh, who is her assistant. As the story unfolds, we are exposed to the underbelly of Mumbai’s film industry. We witness how a female actor is objectified and becomes no less than an ‘item’, how the male chauvinistic media exploits her for it’s own gains, and how it takes a toll on Sapna. “On stage, there are a lot of objects lying around, and the play is a social commentary. The female lead on the stage has the same value that the objects lying around on the stage have,” Kshitish says.

The play also focuses on the society’s perceptions towards women, and how media shapes these perceptions. “I feel the effect that the media has on people is what convinced us to take up this topic. The state of women in this country is something that is in our mind all the time, it makes you very angry.” He says, adding, “There are many things that you want to talk about — the hierarchy that exists between men and women, the inequality, the concept of feminism and how a lot of people don’t understand the meaning of it. All these things were running in our minds and we had to narrow it down to something in an articulate way. We also felt that media has played a very important role in shaping the perceptions that men have towards women.”

Another important aspect of the play is the portrayal of the workings of ‘the B-grade film industry,’ Kshitish wanted the audience to know how the industry exploits women and how this industry has a loyal audience, which helps it thrive. “B-grade films

We wanted to build a team who had a similar take on the subject as us. We knew it had to be a collaborative comment and not just the director’s opinion. KSHITISH DATE, DIRECTOR

are the underbelly of Indian cinema, everyone pretends that it does not exist, but everyone tends to watch it sometime in their life. We wanted to show that there is a huge section of the society which only watches these films, these films don’t have a storyline, plot or sometimes even characters,” he says. He says, adding, “It is just adult films and they just want to sell sex. This is also the condition in Hindi films, unfortunately. It is the same with journalism, advertisements or theatre, a lot of people unnecessarily tend to bring sex into it to achieve sensationalism. Just for the sake of selling it.”

Ask him if there were any obstacles that cropped up while staging the play, he says, “We wanted to build a team who had a similar take on the subject as us. We knew it had to be a collaborative comment and not just a director’s or a writer’s opinion.”

Although Kshitish’s parents were not into theatre, his great grandfather was the legendary actor, Keshavrao Date. He has appeared in both Hindi and Marathi films, most notably in four V. Shantaram films.