Arusam Madhusudan’s dream of being an actor is finally being fulfilled. After 26 years of being a mime trainer, his debut film Aakashavani (produced by Rajamouli’s son Karthikeya) will be hitting the screens in a few months. The tall and dusky mime guru from Warangal never had a plan of action in life.
When he was in school, he peeped out of the window and was excited to see his friend perform mono acting. The act was a mime depicting a hungry person going to a hotel and having a meal; when it’s time to pay the bill, he realises his wallet is missing and is made to grind the idli batter. Madhu didn’t know that what he had seen was called mime. The image stayed with him.
Later on during Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations in his neigbourhood, he was narrated a short story on how a villager goes to watch a film in the theatre, the stampede and the joy and tears he experiences while seeing the film. He imagined and enacted it.
It was a late night show but the response he got for it was tremendous, and gave him confidence and direction. He analyses, “As a child I wanted to be a doctor, my hand writing was bad, marks weren’t good and I had low self-esteem. I always craved for appreciation and when I got that, there was no stopping me. I decided to take professional training and my hunt for a guru began. Though Nerella Venu Madhav helped me initially, I was looking for a mime artiste who promised to train me but kept postponing for reasons he best knew. He questioned my credentials. I didn’t give up, I approached mime artiste, P Nagabhushanam who not only trained me but also introduced me to international mime artiste Niranjan Goswami. He said an exposure outside my territory would help me grow. Till then I thought all these gurus were insecure and never serious about helping students. But I changed my mind.”
Looking back
Madhusudan was lucky to have people like Niranjan Goswami and Chinna Jeer Swami who helped him rise in his career. The latter sponsored his trip to the U.S. to attend workshops. He concentrated on creating a fusion in mime from both Indian and European culture. That brought in changes in his body movements and make-up. He avers, “I sculpted myself keeping my originality intact. I took control of my body, my diet and my sleep pattern.” He did his PG in theatre from University of Hyderabad and won many awards, including the Sangeet Natak Akademiaward and Ustad Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar. Currently he runs Indian Mime Academy where students from across country and abroad are trained. That’s how he met his wife Sabrina Anastasio, a Frenchwoman who is a puppeteer and came to study India’s art forms and became his student.
Madhu signs off, “Mime is a mother of all arts, one can be a dubbing artiste, can get into anything artistic. These days even dancers learn mime. Film stars such as Rajendra Prasad, Devadas Kanakala, Chiranjeevi and Kamal Hassan have all learnt mime. Any character is first designed by mime. Even before a person utters a dialogue, it is his body that speaks first. Madhusudhan says he doesn’t like it when people say a particular art form is dying. You and I will die but not mime or any art. Art is eternal.”
