Producers need to protect the technicians, says Sonali Kulkarni

Sonali Kulkarni says that her group were one of the first troupes to call it off before the quarantine

Actor Sonali Kulkarni who has acted in films such as Dil Chahta Hai (2001) and Taxi no 9211 (2006) has also established herself as a theatre actor over the years. Earlier this year, she was seen playing one of the lead roles in Mirror Crack’d, a play directed my British playwright and director, Melly Still. Sonali, who was supposed to travel to the United States to perform a play in March cancelled her travel plans due to the Coronavirus outbreak grappling the world right now. She says, “One can be asymptomatic and therefore be the carrier of the disease. It’s quite scary. You must have the right sensibilities at this point. It is okay to be scared, you can’t be brave, all throughout your life.”

If she would have travelled, she says, she would have kept the lives of her technicians travelling with her at stake. “They could have been in trouble as well. I am so happy I am not going. I told as many friends as I could and also announced it on my social media. We were one of the first troupes to call it off. We didn’t even say that we would be back on this particular month or maybe later in the year. Because we don’t know even if this blows over, if people will be ready for entertainment.”

Talking about what the effect of the outbreak could have on the theatre industry, the Singham actor (2011) says, “This is going to hit the theatre industry for a long term. All the technicians are going to face a lot of problems because we are shut. New productions will take time to evolve. I tried to take care of my team as a producer. I urge all producers to compensate their technicians because they are the ones who will lose out on their daily wages as they earn per show. Producers need to be possessive and protective of their team right now.”

Sonali laments that her generation has never seen anything like this before. “We had heard about the plague which was pre Independence but we had not experienced that phase. We had experienced terror attacks, the horrid monsoons but the Coronavirus is affecting our lives directly. We have to be really vigilant and stay put at our homes.”

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