You have to face the body-shamers head-on: Nirmiti Sawant

Veteran Marathi actor Nirmiti Sawant is known to speak her mind at all times, even if that is not perceived as a diplomatically correct way to be by many others. On her visit to Nagpur to stage her play '

Vacuum Cleaner

', Nirmirti gets candid about promoting theatre and how

body-shamers

need to be put in their place, quite firmly…

As an actor she has done equally well in all the mediums, including television, films and theatre, Nirmiti is honest enough to confess that it is theatre that remains her ‘first love’ and coming to Nagpur with a play means a lot to her. “Whenever I come to the city, I love the way my Nagpuri friends, including Sana Pandit and maestro of zadipatti theatre, Rajesh Chitnis, attend all my shows along with their respective families. The warmth that I receive here, always makes me emotional,” she shares.

But is she aware that while celebrity plays do quite well here, most of the plays staged by the local artistes generally have empty halls and vacant chairs? To this, she says, “This happened with all of us when we started. But then people of Nagpur can play a pro-active role here. They can promote a play that wins a competition in Mumbai, Pune, Nashik or Goa. If you won’t support your own people, who else will?”

This staunch supporter of

Marathi theatre

, who will soon be seen in Hemant Dhome’s upcoming film '

Zimma

', reveals that she has fought her own share of battles and being body-shamed was one of them. “Even as a child, plump or fat people learn to face such jokes. So, I took it in my stride till I turned a teenager and then it hurt me. My first brush against this happened when I was doing my first commercial play after winning several awards in the state competition circuits. On the first day of the rehearsals I realised that there were a lot of jokes written around my weight issues in the script. So I asked the director (who I would not like to name) if he had hired me for cracking jokes at my expense or for my talent. His response was that he had learnt a major lesson that day and then all those demeaning dialogues were immediately changed. So, I learnt to tackle the body-shamers during my first professional play. Since that day, nobody has dared to body-shame me. Later I did a TV show Jadubai Jorat, which was basically to highlight this issue of fat people and the humiliation they face. In a lighter vein, it handled a sensitive issue but I feel you have to face body-shamers head-on.”