Dec 6, 1999

Anahita Uberoi, 32
Actor

QUIET FIRE
She is something of an upstart. She brings polished talent and new ideas to Mumbai's rather incestuous English theatre circuit that mostly dishes out sex comedies and tired re-runs of Broadway classics. Anahita Uberoi's own productions are refreshingly unpretentious: the dialogues -- or monologues -- don't sound like a bad copy of the Queen's Birthday Address, and themes have a local flavour.

She first wowed audiences three years ago in the Glass Menagerie as a withdrawn, disabled girl. This was followed by the absorbing Seascape with Sharks and Dancer, a destructive love story directed by Rahul Bose. And most recently, there's Going Solo, a superb series of funny, poignant monologues by and about women.

There's a little background to that success. Mother Vijaya Mehta is the grande dame of Marathi theatre. Uberoi trained at the famous Herbert Berghof Institute in New York and acted on Broadway. Then she came back, no regrets. And she has a cause. "My aim is to bring money to Indian theatre so that acting becomes a profession rather than a hobby." As for herself, it's her life.

-Farah Baria

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