Irshad Panjatan

Irshad Panjatan was born on 7th September 1931 in Hyderabad. He had seven siblings and one of his elder brothers is Dr.Abid Hussain who in his late life became an economist and a civil servant. In 1975, he married Ingrid Sattler. Not only is he an actor but he was also the person who brought the art of mime in India. He is also a veteran mime artist. He began his career as a stage artist then he acted in some Bollywood films but he ended up becoming a mime artist. He was aviation engineer by profession but he couldn’t leave behind his passion and love for theatre and acting so he left Delhi in the year 1950 to follow his passion.

He took training in Kathakali from Raghavan Nair and Narendra Sharma and further became a disciple of Uday Shankar Uday Shankar is one the most well-known Indian fil >> Read More... . He later joined the theatre group of Begum Qudsia Zaidi known as Hindustan Theatre as an actor. In the year 1957, he acted the Theft scene in a play called Chaarudutta without any dialogues and received good reviews. It was a magazine called Marg that called the play ‘a good pantomime’ and it was when for the first time Irshad got intrigued about the art of mime and decided to learn and pursue about it. He learned mime from a local street mime artist in Delhi all within an hour and then he began to practice mime all his own and improvised all that he learned from the street artist.

He earned wide fame for introducing mime during the 1960’s. His first play in mime was in the year 1962. He started focusing more on his time and acted in his first Bollywood film Saat Hindustani by KA Abbas in the year 1969. He played the role of Portuguese spy. Over time he developed his own style and started touring performing his mime shows. He worked on few public service documentaries by the Film Division like- Six Five Four Three Two (on family planning), Kilonewala (in 1971).

He began his international tour to European countries and West Africa by conducting his first performance in Lahore Women’s College and from there on he full-fledged began his shows and finally when he reached Germany for his tour he settled there for good. He opened his mime school in Germany the same year he got married. He acted in various German and Hollywood films such as God is No Soprano, Manitou’s Show, Iron Sky Click to look into! >> Read More... , My Life As a Fairy Tale Fairy Tale is a Pakistani Television show that pre >> Read More... , Reclaim Your Throne, etc. He gave his last mime performance in the year 2008 at annual Theatre Beyond Words organized by Amol Palekar Amol Palekar was born on 24th November, 1944 in Mu >> Read More... in Pune. In the year 2012, Irshad gave a lecture-demonstration on a mime in Hyderabad at Lamakaan.