Of all that was talked about Rangadhara’s production of Raktbeej, actress Poonam Chandna Golecha stood out. After all, getting in and out of many roles — Sujata the wife of Sharma, and Lalita the wife of Dr Shantanu — within a matter of minutes isn’t easy. After auditioning for the play in February, she was first asked to be part of the production team instead. It was only after practising with the team for a while that Vinay Varma realised that the actors weren’t suiting the role and called for auditions again and it was then that Poonam was cast.
Poonam’s first tryst with theatre started in 2001. “I was 17 when I did my first play in college by Mahesh Dattani called, Where There Is A Will. It was then I realised that theatre was something that I could do,” she says. Since then, Poonam has been part of five plays and over 20 shows. After she got married, Poonam was always interested in theatre, but then she took up a job as a bank manager at SBI. “After my daughter was born four years back, I took a sabbatical from work and I’ve been busy with her,” she says. But though she took a break from theatre, the pull was too strong to stay away. “I watched Vinay’s Agnes of God and I realised that I wanted to get back to theatre,” says Poonam, who is a post graduate in statistics from Madras University and has done her L.L.B. from OU.
For Raktbeej, Poonam had to undergo a strenuous practise regime. “In one part of the play, a husband makes his wife sleep with his boss, and in the other part of the play a wife loses her child. So the challenge was to leave the characters behind on stage and become Poonam once again,” she says. For now, Poonam is content dabbling with theatre: “My job is my bread and butter... but theatre is my adrenaline.”
