"When kids my age wanted to be doctors and teachers, I just wanted to act

It seems her initiation into the field began quite early, at six years of age when she played the role of the protagonist’s daughter in Murde ka ration, an adaptation of Dear Departed. And since then there has been no looking back. Her father moved to Atlanta, USA, in connection with his job, and the changeover was like Godsend for her.

She joined the Art Play Academy at Broadway, where she was trained for two years and also took up Theatre as one of her subjects in high school. About the experience she says, “The ambit of theatre is very wide out there. We not only acted but also conceived ideas for our plays, made masks depicting the characters, crated the storyline and finally put it into shape. I think it helped me get over my inhibitions at an early age and helped my creativity flower. Moreover, the theatre exercises helped me a lot when I was doing major plays in India later.”

Coming back to India, she moved on to do, Beewion ka madrasa where she played the part of Kammo, the maidservant, at 12 years of age. The play enjoyed great popularity and had 150 shows in various parts of the country.

In Kaua chala hans ki chaal, she played two roles simultaneously, that of the music master and Mary, a servant girl. “It was a comedy play, and my characters were loud. I really had to work a lot, for I am a rather quite person. But when my performance was appreciated, I felt confident about handling different kinds of roles,”she reminisces.

She then did Aaj raat, where the character was very sensitive and had to be handled deftly to bring out the poignancy and the full impact of its emotions. “It was a very subtle, underplayed kind of role and it gave a different dimension to my acting skills.”

Among her memorable performances is that of Saru, the lead female character in Vijay Tendulkar’s Panchhi aise aate hain, where she plays the role of an ugly, shrewish girl whom no one wants to marry, but who gets transformed when a vagabond who happens to stay at their place makes her feel beautiful from deep within. “It was complex role, the transition from one form to the other had to be gradual and smooth, and very realistic. That is where theatre differs from cinema. I guess I could portray my character well, judging from the response I got later.”

After school, she joined the Government College for Women, Sector 11, and began directing plays while she was still in her first year. She won the Best Actress award at the Youth Festival, 95-96, and as elected president of the Dramatics Society for the session 97-98. Her plays, Monkey’s paw and Andey ke Chilkey won the first prize for two consecutive years, while she walked away with the individual prizes. “By this time, I was very certain that I wanted to try for NSD for I realised that is where my calling lay. And fortunately for me, both my parents love theatre, so I never faced any opposition.”

As fate would have it, Nadira Babbar came to the city with her troupe Ek Jut of which Ashish Vidyarthi formed a part. They held a theatre workshop at GCG and Richa went there for a lark. “I participated in their exercises and schedules and Ashish was quite impressed with my work. When he praised my work, one of my friends asked Nadira if she would like to take me as a member of the group and she agreed. That was perhaps one of the happiest moments of my life,” she recalls with a smile.

But accolades have never been stingy with Richa. She has a fan in Neelam Man Singh, from whom she had an offer to join her group, if at all, she couldn’t make it to the NSD for some reason. But perhaps that was not to be. Neelam’s loss has been NSD’s gain and the fulfilment of Richa’s long cherished dream. Well, I can only say Amen’ to that.