Naseeruddin Shah is one of those rare actors in Bollywood who returned to the stage after making a mark in cinema. And with a career spanning over four decades, he has left an indelible mark on both mediums with his rich and diverse repertoire. At an event last month, the actor spoke about how the craft of acting is perceived in films and on stage.

He said, “Filmi people have one word – attitude – and theatre people have one word – filmi. It means bad acting. It’s a nonsensical belief of theatre that stage acting has to be done 10 times larger than life if you have to reach the person in the last row. If you are aiming at the person in the last row, what about the person in the first row? He is going to go deaf! You have to find a technique where everybody receives the same volume of speech and the same emotional content.”

Elaborating further, he said, “I can justify this. The first time I watched Dr Shriram Lagoo on the stage – and I can say that he is the greatest actor in the world I’ve seen on the stage in my life – I was sitting on the balcony in the last row and could hear every word he said, his breathing and the feeling in his eyes. I didn’t need to go into close-up. It is wrong that, at a distance, you don’t understand what the actor is trying to do. If what he is doing is true, you will get it even from the distance, which is why you don’t need close-ups.”