Hamlet, Prism Theatre Society

/ Shri Ram Centre/

Hamlet returns to his hometown to find his father dead in a mysterious accident, and his uncle both married to his mother and the unopposed chief of everything his father once held. Before long he sees a vengeful spirit urging him to take revenge. Witness Hamlet's journey into madness, moral dilemma and chaos as he tries reclaiming what's rightfully his.

This adaptation contemporizes the plot, characters and language of Hamlet. It uses a modern Hindi prose diction interspersed with verse translations of the soliloquies and some English phrases. The effect is like Bollywood.

Read More

Hamlet, National School of Drama

/ National School of Drama/

Director's Note: “I began my work on Hamlet with seven second year students of NSD in the last week of November. We had taken the play-within-the play in Hamlet for a series of improvisations. We tried to understand the play through this most brilliantly constructed scene by Shakespeare. It opened up many possibilities of making a performance of Hamlet with this scene at the centre. In spite of the problem of time and logistic constraints, the students gave their best. Often the actors doubled up as set, property and costume makers as well, as we did not have the students of design and direction with us. What you witness is a series of improvisations in which the students contributed much more than I did as the director of the play. The emphasis[...]was on the process per se and not the end product.”

The production is a polished, intense exploration in a small studio space of Hamlet's twin dilemmas of the duty of vengeance and the mother's remarriage. 

Read More

Othello, National School of Drama, Delhi, India

/ National School of Drama/
Othello, National School of Drama, Delhi, India

A robust production in modern dress. Its adaptive energies lie in the contemporized revisioning of Shakespeare. The military milieu is emphasized, and Othello and Iago are buddies, even seen gyming together. Iago's wiliness is believable and Othello's susceptibility becomes understandable. Desdemona is spirited: she jumps out of the bed and runs to the bedroom door banging on it for help at the end. The verse in translation is handled with ease and fluency, adding to the contemporary performance of the play.

Read More

Dying to Succeed, Yuki Ellias

/

Dying to Succeed is a whacky show about Shakespeare's iconic characters in today's corporate world. Iago is bitter as Othello doesn't give him the promotion he thinks he deserves; Macbeth is eyeing the CEO's office; and Portia multi-tasks and multi-roles her way around the glass ceiling. Guest appearances by Lady Macbeth, Cordelia, Romeo and Juliet...with a little help from the audience! This is a solo theatre, stand-up and audience interactive performance.

Read More

Piya Behrupiya

/

Separated from her twin brother Sebastian after a shipwreck, Viola disguises herself as a boy to serve the Duke of Illyria. Wooing Olivia on his behalf, she is stunned to find herself the object of Olivia's affections. With the arrival of her brother, and a trick played on Olivia's steward, confusion reigns supreme in this classic romantic comedy of mistaken identity, songs, dances and multiple marriages. Twelfth Night is considered Shakespeare's most lyrical as well as experimental play. Piya Behrupiya transposes the action from Illyria to India in the form of a Nautanki and makes Shakespeare's gloriously sunny comedy come alive.

Read More