Director-actress Meeta Vashishtha elaborates on her 12-year-old passion project in an exclusive interview with India Today. Mani Kaul and That Thing Called the Actor – An in-depth biopic that traces Mani Kaul’s evolution from childhood to his revolutionary films SiddheshwariShe reflects on how Natyashastra shaped her perspective on performance, urging a holistic view of the art that resonates in today’s fragmented story,

Connecting Mani Kaul’s childhood with his vision

Vashishtha draws parallels between Kaul’s formative years in the open landscapes of Rajasthan and the dancer’s expressive odyssey in the 1980s classic, emphasizing how vast silences foster broader creativity. When asked about his inspiration for adding these elements, he shared: “When we were students at the National School of Drama, even in the theater department before that, the teaching process of acting and theater was deeply connected to all the other arts. So, as actors we not only learned about performing with the body, but also learned to be sensitive to architecture, culture and painting. We had teachers who taught us that way.”

The actor further added, “Natyashastra really emphasizes that actors come into acting after learning dance, culture, understanding of architecture, poetry and only then they move towards performance. With Mani, I learned that the cinematic frame is also an architectural frame. … I think what we do as we grow up comes from childhood. For me, going into Mani’s childhood was very interesting to see that he grew up in vast open spaces like the landscape of Rajasthan.”

“I thought it was very powerful there. But as a young child I also experienced the vastness of the landscapes because my father was in the military, and he was deployed to these different places where there were forests or areas away from cities. So, the urban landscape, for me, is a very compressed and suffocating place for people to grow up and the ability to live in an extended space helps you expand your thinking. So, for someone like me who grew up in vast landscapes and silence It’s important to take the journey from there. So taking Mani’s childhood to that kind of filmmaker and being in his films, it’s all interconnected,” Vashishtha said.

Impact of Natyashastra on Indian cinema

The ancient treatise on performance art that is central to Kaul’s method provides Vashishtha a lens through which to critique contemporary frames – urging filmmakers to embrace expansion rather than compression in visual narratives. Asked about its role in today’s storytelling, he explained: “When you see yourself in a frame, you are also aware of your presence in a larger space. It’s a beautiful feeling when you are in a frame that has a sense of detail and beauty. Mani’s frames were also amazing. It’s not just photography, but creating a whole new world every time. So, for me, in my film (recently) it was important to lead to that frame of mind.”

Interrelated Totality of Dramaturgy

Vashishtha opposes cherry-picking from the text, seeing it as an organic whole – like a boiling curry – where actors must phase through its elements before synthesizing them in performance or film. When asked about the aspects that influence her most as an artiste, she replied: “There is no one part of Natyashastra that you can stick with. It is a very comprehensive treatise and every aspect is interconnected with each other. But you cannot think about it separately, it is like when you are cooking, you cannot put all the vegetables together. All the spices and vegetables, you do it in stages. You fry some first and then others. The ingredients are put in and that’s why the dramaturgy has to be understood separately by the actor. But then they work together while making a performance or a film.”

On Mani Kaul’s worldview

Through rhythmic explorations beyond facial expressions, Vashishtha transmits Kaul’s non-objective lens on women – not as propaganda, but as an integral part of human consciousness attuned to nature. When asked whether these sequences recreate Kaul’s view of art, stories, theater and women, he clarified: “I don’t think you should think of Mani’s cinema in terms of how he sees women. In that sense, he is not a director propagating the totality of life. The female heroes in his films are given a beautiful space from the inner world and his complete world-view of cinema.”

“When you do that wholeheartedly, you don’t objectify the woman. I think many directors who make women-centric films, as they call them, end up objectifying women. Removing her from the totality and making her some kind of publicity object, talking about the woman and her issues. That’s a very limited amount of looking at any human being. So, Mani does not fall into such a category. He goes into the human consciousness in a deeper way, Not isolated but connected to everything around it. It is inanimate and connected to nature and everything that makes up this world,” Vashishtha said.

On the 12 year journey of the film

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Testing her NSD knowledge and Kaul’s ethos, Vashishtha says, the delays and difficulties were not failures but temporal necessities – proving that cinema emerges through dedication, not force. When asked what inspired her during the long process, she said, “Yes, it took 12 years to make the film. When I started work on this project, the idea was to have Mani Kaul talk about the film as well as the actor’s art and craft, during which I made extensive notes. I felt it all made acting very simple without any cliches. For example, while showing someone sad, you show tears. But sadness is a state, This is a way of thinking. There is very little understanding about the idea of good acting. Even for Mani’s cinema, you can see there is a whole sequence where people are advising the actor not to work in Mani Kaul’s film.”

“After Siddheshwari, my understanding of Mani Kaul’s cinema, my learning in NSD and Natyashastra, was tested during the shooting of Siddheshwari. While working with Mani, I also learned that cinema is not something that is incompatible with Natyashastra. All I can say is that I do not regret a single moment of the time it took to make this film (Mani Kaul biopic). Delays and difficulties of more than 12 years are part of the process. I don’t think it took 1 or 2 years for the film to come into existence. We feel that there is a kind of divinity coming together in the universe.”

“So, it’s a humbling process, so you have to be very focused, humble, calm and cool and just let whatever happens happen. I also feel like there is a greater wisdom of this universe that understands better than to do what’s necessary. Sometimes, when things get tough and things are going the opposite way, the best way is to let go of all control and let it be. I really believe there’s something better waiting to happen, and maybe the time just isn’t right. Making this movie. Timing is divine intervention, so the important thing is to do what you do and give it a go. That’s why I didn’t delay and doubt things for a moment,” Vashishtha said.

On the discovery of Mani Kaul by Gen Z and Gen Alpha

In a social media-saturated age of fleeting images, Vashishtha holds up Kaul’s quiet, deeply driven cinema as a sanctuary to reclaim inner wholeness amid digital chaos. When asked about his message to the younger generation who are looking for newbies like Kaul, he advised: “I think you, Gen Z and Gen Alpha, need the cinema of Mani Kaul because in this world of social media where images are ephemeral, fragmented, aggressively frustrating, a quiet place where you find all your scattered parts coming together is the cinema of a director like Mani Kaul. I call him not a maverick, but a A profound thinker and visualizer, no matter what rules the world takes over our lives, the fact is that the inner space we need to connect to is one of our own peace and depth, so Mani Kaul’s cinema is timeless.

Vashishtha was recently seen in the Netflix series – delhi crime season 3,