At the press meet for the 19th Gollapudi Srinivas National Award function, it was announced that Suhasini Mani Ratnam will be directing a special play, I am an Actor, your Honour (Actor-in-law). The play will be premiered at the award ceremony to be held on the 12 August at The Music Academy, Chennai. This play will be based on her father, actor Charu Haasan’s book Thinking on My Feet which deals with his experiences as a lawyer and his relationship with his daughter, Suhasini. Actors Y Gee Mahendran and his daughter Madhuvanthi will play Chaaru Haasan and Suhasini, respectively. Y Gee Mahendran said that as he has worked only in Tamil plays so far and it was a new experience to be in an English play. Suhasini said that she had been closely associated with the Gollapudi Srinivas Trust and this award function for the past three years, and that it was Gollapudi Subbarao’s idea to perform this play this year.
“The play spans my father’s entire life, right from the 1930s. Therefore, due to practical reasons, 30% of the play has already been filmed, and this filming has been supervised by director Priya. The theatre portions are supervised by KK from Little Theatre. Unlike other creative productions that come with disclaimers saying that everything is fictional, we can easily say every dialogue in this play is a real conversation we have had in real life,” said Suhasini.
The play will have actor Prasanna playing the role of Chaaru Haasan in his thirties, and TV anchor Ramya will play Suhasini’s mother in this portion. “There won’t be actors playing Kamal Haasan, but there definitely will be mentions of him,” Suhasini clarified.
Established in 1998, the Gollapudi Srinivas trust presents the award in the memory of Gollapudi Srinivas, a young director, who passed away in an accident during the shoot of his maiden venture, Prema Pusthakam in 1992. The most famous recipient of the award has been Aamir Khan, who won it for Taare Zameen Par. The memorial lecture presented by late K Balachander that year moved Aamir Khan to tears.
This year, Jayaprakash Radhakrishnan will receive the award for his debut film, Lens which is a multi-lingual film about the travails of Social Media. The film’s cinematography is done by S R Kathir and background music is by Siddharth Vipin. This year, Kannada actor Shivraj Kumar would be the Chief Guest while Priyadarshan, Sudhir Mishra and Jayasudha would be the Guests of Honour. Actor Boman Irani will deliver the memorial lecture on “The making of an actor”. Actor Kalki Koechlin will compere the ceremony.
Photos of the press meet, by Dani Charles:
