To Laugh Or Not To Laugh

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 the text, 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, Rachel D’Souza and Neil Bhoopalan.

Directed by Bollywood actor Rajat Kapoor, it has got standing ovation around the world. It has received the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META) in 2009 for Best Play, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress and Best Costume Design.

The play is in Gibberish and English

• Date: 6.30 pm, 15^th November

• Venue: Fine Arts Hall, Foreshore Road, Cochin

Comments

Olive Tree said…

Hi, it's a very great blog.
I could tell how much efforts you've taken on it.
Keep doing!

1:57 PM

Book Review: An Autobiography Of A Sex Worker by Nalini Jameela

I am 51 years old. And I would like to continue to be a sex worker.” This is how the candid and defiant opening statement in Nalini Jameela’s autobiography in Malayalam, Oru Lymgika-thozhilaliyude Atmakadha, goes. It at once throws a challenge at society’s double standards — harsh on prostitutes and soft on the clients. Nalini Jameela, who is the coordinator of the Kerala Sex Workers’ Forum, reveals her sordid story with no trace of compunction. Nalini was a 24-year-old widow when she entered the profession to feed her two children. At that time she did not think about the repercussions of her act. She writes, “I was earning Rs 4.50 at a tile factory near Trissur. My mother-in-law served me with an ultimatum to either give her five rupees a day to look after my children or leave the house. I recounted my woes to a friend, who introduced me to Rosechechi. Rosechechi promised me Rs 50 if I spent time with a man. The first thought that came to my mind was that my children would be looked

Kochi Muziris Biennale: Whorled Explorations

London-based artist Hew Locke was in for a bit of shocker when he reached the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014 site, Fort Kochi in Kerala. His installation, Sea Power , was apparently crafted from his imagination of what the historical kingdom of Cochin would have been. Indeed, he had yoked his imagination to that of a 17th century German printmaker. The printmaker had in turn conceived the kingdom of Cochin based on the tales of another. “My work is imagination based on the imagination of an image that was perhaps real. It was double fiction and I thought the prints were elaborate romantic imagery...but I discovered when I arrived in Cochin that this double fiction has elements of reality. People still wear lungis and walk around bare-chested,” says an amazed Locke. Hew Locke’s beaded frieze of mythological and historical figures that gently sway in the wind is a response to the biennial theme, ‘Whorled Exploration’, and suggests blips in the seminal movements of history. Whorled Exp

SnooTea: Just My Style

(Photographs by Minu Ittyipe) It began on a lark to spiff up my morning cuppa. Oh well, I just wanted a change from what I had been drinking all my life. I am not complaining about the faithful brew that I stir up with tea dust, it does merrily improve with two extra spoonfuls of sugar but I was just plain bored with the regular. My concept of a cup of tea was corralled in the traditional Indian style- coppery coloured liquid topped with plenty of milk and sugar but now there was in me this undeniable thirst for a more delicate bouquet. Tranquilitea, Coonoor Curiously, though grown in our own backyard, few of us have heard of the orthodox leaf tea, forget the Silver Tips, Golden Tips and the White Tea etc.. that quietly find their way to the export market. To make a foray into this relatively unknown terrain, I headed for Tranquilitea, a tea lounge in the Nilgiris, for a cup of “Tippy” tea. On a sober note, you are cautioned not to confuse “Tippy” with the more commonplace “Tipsy” for

Krazy Kochi

Search This Blog