Neil Bhoopalam on theatre, comedy and performing The Horse at Kamani Auditorium

Neil Bhoopalam is one of those actors who has always managed to make his presence felt on stage. Whether it was as the endearing Kaffee in A Few Good Men or as Alexander Ivanov, the dissident who speaks against the regime in the dark, yet funny Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. After regaling the Mumbai audience with The Horse, a political farce which is part of Aadyam Theatre, Neil hopes to recreate the same magic in the capital as well.

Directed by Sunil Shanbag, The Horse has been adapted from a text by Hungarian writer Julius Hay and is a musical comedy set in a Roman tavern during the reign of Emperor Caligula. Neil plays Selenus, a young lad who comes to Rome with his horse, marking the beginning of a series of events that threaten to upend the Roman order. The play takes aim at celebrity culture, unchecked ambition, and the erosion of public institutions, and the actor is clearly impressed by the text. Giving credit to Aadyam and Shanbag for bringing this production to the Indian stage, Neil says that he was blown away by the text. “It is fantastic how Julius Hay has captured a time during the Roman civilisation and transformed it into a comic satire,” he says, adding that comedy continues to be one of his main draws on stage.

A still from The Horse
| Photo Credit:
Neville Sukhia

For someone who has masterfully traversed the worlds of television, OTT, films and theatre, it is the latter that continues to inspire him every day. “Theatre is my passion. It is an art form where you create something out of nothing. Yes, there is a script, but everything else is magic,” says Neil, who makes it a point to do a play a year. Last year, it was The Nether directed by Mohit Takalkar and before that was Every Good Boy Deserves Favour.

The 42-year-old actor was approximately 19 years of age when he started doing theatre with directors such as Atul Kumar and Rehan Engineer. “I remember once we were backstage in the green room just before the start of a show for which we had rehearsed for a month or so. Rehaan Engineer came up to me and told me to forget everything we had rehearsed! I couldn’t believe it,” he laughs, adding that it is only much later that he understood why he was asked to do so. “Rehearsals are done in controlled environments, but on stage, anything can happen. So, I think what he meant was, trust your instincts to adapt if you need to,” he says.

Neil Bhoopalam
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Neil is of the opinion that the only thing that can better society is theatre. “It is an active art form. Cinema is aided with live locations and background music, whereas here, one is only equipped with the human being who is in front of you. The human spirit gets inspired when it watches a story live. Something touches your chakras, your mind, and your past when you watch a story unravel in front of you,” he continues.

On the film front, the actor was recently seen in the epic historical action Chhaava (starring Vicky Kaushal in the lead) as Mughal prince Muhammad Akbar, earlier this year, and describes it as a “golden opportunity” to work on such a massive production. “I trained for almost three weeks and learnt horse-riding and sword fighting for it. Just to be able to jam with Vicky and to see the director’s conviction and belief in his actors was fantastic,” says Neil, who will next be seen in Nikhil Advani’s period drama The Revolutionaries.

The Horse will be staged at Kamani Auditorium, Copernicus Marg, Opposite Doordarshan Bhawan, Mandi House, on September 6 and 7.