Actor Ishwak Singh: Creativity is the king in OTT

By Siddhi Jain New Delhi, Dec 27 (IANSlife) Crime thriller series ‘Paatal Lok’ actor Ishwak Singh, who had quite a productive lockdown, says that creativity is the king in the OTT space. Calling 2020 challenging, he also said it was a remarkable year for him, as it brought him on the map.
Singh stars in ‘Unpaused’, a Hindi anthology consisting of five short stories revolved around lives of people impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Excerpts from an IANSlife chat with Ishwak Singh: Q: You have a background in theatre. Tell us about your time and learnings on stage.
A: Theatre is a pretty widespread and diverse space but the kind of theatre I wanted to do was very, very realistic and minimalistic – which means there weren’t many sets or too much anything apart from the spotlight and the actor. To me, that was the ultimate training ground. My idea was to learn the craft, and I thought what could be a better space to learn than a play where it’s just the actor and spotlight. To me, theatre is the most authentic way of learning acting. When I started out, I realised it would take a lot of time, because normally you enrol with a theatre group and it takes a good number of years before you get the part of a protagonist and you build a body of work and get known for it. It’s a slow and ongoing process which I wanted to do, it was a conscious choice and I really enjoyed it.
Q: From an actor’s perspective, how promising would you say the OTT space is?