Krazy Kochi

If used with the right intonations, gibberish can appropriate the garb and grammar of any developed language. And how! Rajat Kapoor used it to perfection in his play Hamlet, The Clown Prince that was staged in Cochin. Almost mocking the literary intellectual, the play began with a dose of gibberish-Shakespeare was reduced to just that. And yet the language of nonsense was used craftily to bring a new meaning to the classic play. Rajat Kapoor speaks his mind in this interview. It is obvious Hamlet, The Clown Prince is very dear to your heart? How much research went into creating this brilliant play. Not much research. No research actually. That is not my way of working. But a lot of work on stage- in rehearsals- the process was great fun, never work. The use of gibberish, the language of nonsense, can be used so well in theatre. What made you use this for this script? Well, that is something we discovered in the earlier play - C FOR CLOWN. And we continue using it in this-it was good t...

Hamlet, The Clown Prince Hamlet, The Clown Prince, is an award winning play directed by Rajat Kapoor. It is a laugh riot. However, it cannot be left unsaid that this play in English and Gibberish, is made of several layers that is profound in meaning. And even while you laugh you cannot stop thinking. It seeks to look at things in a different perspective. The play: A bunch of clowns is putting up a show. They have taken the Shakespearean tragedy, ‘Hamlet’ and are trying to enact it. They sometimes misinterpret the text, sometimes find new meanings in it, sometimes try to understand it and very often make a mess of it. They choose to use phrases from the play mixed with gibberish. They even edit th e t ext, throw out important scenes and often reverse the order of things. But through this all they look for the essence of Hamlet and try to find a context in our own times. It is performed by The Company Theatre and the performers are Atul Kumar, Puja Sarup, Sujay Saple, Namit Das,...