Nirmala Chennappa started her film career with a big bang. She won the Karnataka State Award as the Best Actress for her performance in her debut film Tallana. Then the young actress was loaded with similar offers but refused to take it up. “That was not what I wanted. I did not want to be typecast in the same mould for life,” starts Nirmala, who then took a back seat from films and started working on television as an actor, producer and director. She even went on to start her own production house called Sai Nirmala Productions.
The talented artiste goes back in time and says that it was not acting that first captured her heart, but sports. “I was a kabbadi player and was involved in all kinds of sports. It was during my PU holidays that someone suggested I attend an acting workshop. I almost fell off my chair as acting was something I never ever thought of.”
But she did attend a theatre workshop with Nagabharana’s Benaka. “There I discovered a different form of theatre. I was the best actress in the troupe. Soon, I received a letter from Benaka asking me to join their troupe. My parents – father a KSRTC driver and mother a housewife – offered me all the support and that is how my journey in acting began,” says Nirmala, who also met her husband and actor Sardar Sathya at Benaka. From there the duo went to Rangayana for a three-month training, “which showed me that theatre is something much bigger. I discovered that the more you dig into it, the more you find.”
Ask her if one can learn acting or it is an inborn talent, Nirmala responds, “Skills can be learnt. But the emotions have to be from within. You have to work out the pause, the depth of the emotions yourself.”
Nirmala came back and started working with Ranga Shankara, which she calls her school. “While Sardar went to Neenasam to train further, I was getting the best here itself. It offered me the scope to work with the best directors – nationally and internationally renowned.”
In the following months, Nirmala says she would be a part of 14 to 15 plays. She did not want to restrict herself to just acting even on stage. So she took to stage lighting and design and make-up too. “The thirst was there and Ranga Shankara was satisfying that desire. I started working as an artiste and technician. It is a rare combination. So I was never out of a job. If I could not get to act I would work as a technician,” laughs the actress, who adds “Women rarely get into the lighting and technical field in theatre. I guess it was my sports that helped me foray into that.”
Now the 30-year-old is known for her direction of popular serial Padmavathi on Colours Kannada. She has also acted in Kusuma Bale (a short film), which fetched her a role in ETV’s Kicchu. “ TV launched me in a big way. I have acted in over 25 serials now. Parvati Parameshwara on Zee Kannada went on for seven long years! It was a huge hit with viwers as I would don a different character in every episode. Not many people like to explore various facets of their own self. But I like to do that. One has to utilise every opportunity one gets.”
