Real age vs playing age: No craft can hide the truth

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Not so long ago, young actors would streak their hair white when preparing for a role. The reason, there weren’t too many parts written for young protagonists, so if you wanted a meaty role, you had to “age”.
Fortunately a lot has changed since then. Now actors tend to lie about their age, in order to keep drinking from the fountain of youth.

The reason why actors lie about their age is because often it is the basis of being excluded in spite of possessing the necessary skills to master the role. This is more so in film, because of the importance of appearance, but it is quite prevalent in theatre as well.
Age is an incredibly complicated thing in performance. There is your “actual age” and “playing age”. Real age actually has very little bearing performance.
Yet sometimes, no amount of craft can hide the truth. I remember when I was almost 27, I got cast as a teenager. While I was able to sound “teen” and look “teen” if I shaved my face just before performance time, I was still betrayed by my bulging waistline.
But what happens when you were cast at the right age, but now you are not. The play has been running many years and now you find yourself not in the same age category as when you started. This is a conundrum a lot of actors are finding themselves in recently. Primarily because plays are running for longer than before. Two of my own shows are suffering from the same problem. The President is Coming started when almost all of the cast were under 25. That was in 2007. Today most of them have gone far ahead in their careers and in years. While not old, they are slowly greying. A condition that seems to be afflicting more and more people as they hit the big 3-0. Rehearsals feel a little like a middle aged gathering. It seemed like no amount of make up or magical theatre lighting is going to help capture the lost years. I had visions of all of us in the dressing room “blackening” our hair rather than the earlier whitening processes.
And then rehearsal began, and each one transformed back into the 20 somethings who fight tooth and nail for an opportunity to meet George Bush. That’s when I realised, age or playing age is all about energy. Not about years under the belt.
Khatijabai of Karmali Terrace has a different problem. Although the story is told by an ageing matriarch in her eighties, she shuttles back and forth through age — sometimes nine, sometimes twenty three and sometimes in her forties. It requires an actor at the top of her craft to be able to convincingly portray all the various life experiences with absolutely no help from costumes changes or make up. For my mind, Jayati Bhati does manage this effortlessly. But the show has been running for eight years now. So the parts that were easy to play then, require more effort now, and vice versa. It is a strange trade off. Jayati always jokes that she will continue to play the part until she reaches the actual age of Khatijabai.
In film, you are cast, you perform and the role is immortalised on celluloid. In theatre, a successful show might mean that you are perhaps outgrowing the part. Plays, these days, often run for many years. Class of ’84, Vagina Monologues, Pune Highway, Dance Like a Man have all been running for almost a decade or more. In a repertory system, the younger actors take over the younger parts. But in the “freelance actor” system of English theatre, the holes are harder to fill.
So then, do productions like this have a certain “shelf life”, or do the actors rise to the challenge. But then how credible is a 40 year old man playing a teenager?
Or should I hope that our new play Nostalgia Brand Chewing Gum doesn’t get too successful? Wow, who would have thought too much success is a problem? Truly the theatre is governed by its own unique set of rules.
I guess that’s why I fell in love with it when I was fifteen, and will continue to serve it till I am eighty.