Diving into a character with a tragic past: Rajeev Siddhartha on Zee Theatre’s 'Love'

Zee Theatre’s new teleplay Love is a “futuristic adaptation of Pygmalion”, says actor Rajeev Siddhartha. What made him want to act in the play was how interesting the character graph was, from the burdened man in the first scene, to him finally lifting that weight off his shoulders.

Getting to play a character that has many different layers, and different shades to his personality, was an added cherry on the top for the actor.

Set in the future, the science fiction play is about an innovator, played by Siddhartha, who creates a robot using artificial intelligence, and falls in love with it. Ironically, Siddhartha’s character actually creates this robot to make his mother believe that he’s found love and is getting married, to get her off his back, but fate or science has other plans.

The writing, the production team, the crew were all brilliant, says Siddhartha. But his biggest takeaway from the play was how a project can become so much more special when everyone collaborates, and helps each other be better everyday, be it helping the actors bring out their best performances or just not letting the pressure get to anyone.

The actor feels that the atmosphere on the sets was such that even diving into a character with a tragic past was joyful. Though Siddhartha says there were no challenges, he talks about how an actor has to project his voice on stage while doing theatre. Says Siddhartha, “Theatre is linear, you know what's happening and how you can embody the emotions. But there has to be a certain honesty and truthfulness to the performance.”

Having acted in school and college previously, Siddhartha went from being an investment banker to an actor after he realised that acting wasn’t going to leave him and that he needed to take a plunge for his passion. The actor will be seen next in RSVP's film Love Sitara, the new seasons of Ashram and Four More Shots Please! and in a short film.