September 9 - 15, 2009

Hamara Shakespeare Festival 2009

Five centuries after his demise, William Shakespeare (1564-1616) continues to symbolize the fullest exploration of theatre to represent the gamut of human experience and capture its heights and depths. No playwright in history has been rendered into other languages as often, or been appreciated by an audience as widespread, as Shakespeare has been, particularly in the twentieth century.

Prakriti Foundation's commitment to theatre brought inevitably to Shakespeare's work, except that we were interested in exploring the Indian twist – how have Indian individuals and groups, actors and directors chosen to interpret Shakespeare? The result of this thought process is Hamara Shakespeare, a festival of 3 plays derived from Shakespeare, performed in Chennai for the third year in sucession...................
RanvirShah Artistic Director, Prakriti
Foundation

SCHEDULE

Anurupa Roy's ALMOST TWELFTH NIGHT:
9th and 10th September 2009:
9th September: Asan memorial School, Anderson Road,Chennai
PSBB School, Nungambakkam
10th September: Bala Vidya Mandir School, Adyar and a general (public) show
at Chandralekha's SPACES, No.1, Elliots Beach Road, Besant Nagar,
Chennai at 7 PM.
Duration: 56 Minutes
It is in Hinglish.

BACKGROUND
Based on Shakespeare's immortal comedy about twin siblings separated in a sea storm and re-united after many adventures. Cross dressing, love triangles and much chaos are all in this story told with small rod (bunraku style) puppets and puppeteers as storytellers and actors.
The show has been performed for more than 50 times

SYNOPSIS
Viola and Sebastian set off on a sea voyage in search of a new life but their ship is destroyed in a sea storm and the twins are separated. Viola is washes ashore the island of Illiriya and is found by two maids. They help her dress as a man, Cezario, to help her find work. She gets a job as Duke Orsino's pageboy. The Duke is smitten by lady Olivia who has been mourning the death of her brother and father in solitary confinement. Orsino sends his pageboy Viola, to woo Olivia on his behalf. Olivia falls in love with the pageboy instead. In the meantime the domestic staff at Lady Olivia's home is engaged in their own intrigue. Malvolio the butler and Maria the maid are constantly bickering. Maria tricks Malvolio into believing that lady Olivia loves him. A crazy love triangle follows but in the end there is a twist in the tale……………….

K.V.Akshara'sLear Lahari (Kannada)
Based on Shakespeare's King Lear
11th September 09
at the Rama Rao Kala Mantap(Karnataka Sangha),
111 Habibullah Road, T.Nagar at 7 PM.

(K.V.Akashara is the son of the legendary theatre activist late K.V.Subbanna winner of the Magsaysay award and founder of Neenasam theatre centre in Heggodu, Karnataka)

SYNOPSIS
The present version of Lear concentrates on the main character of the well known Shakespearean classic and has developed it into an intimate performance. The state of mind of Lear and its development in the play form the focus of the performance. One prominent theme in King Lear is old age, and the way humans try to 'manage' it becomes a binding thread of the plots of the play. The play is a journey into world of contradictions and reversals -- Lear looses his control over his State here to eventually understand of his state of being; and he also becomes wise after he gets mad. The play is also not just about managing old age and its consequences but also about the human desire -- especially of the modern west -- to postpone and avoid old age itself. Similarly the play is also about the contradictions between speech and silence. Speech enables people to express as much as it disables them to do the same. The present production attempts to bring all these contradictions out in theatrical terms

Prakriti Foundation presents
About Caliban: Also About Colombo
by Parnab Mukherjee and the students of Loyola College,
12th September 09
at Chandralekha's SPACES No1, Elliots Beach Road, Besant Nagar Chennai at 7 PM.
Also on
14th September: WCC College
15th September: Stella Maris College and Loyola College
Duration: 65 Minutes
It is in English

Principal Texts:
Peter Handke, Edward Kamau Braithwaite, William Shakespeare, Sumathy and a collage of works from Jaffna poets

SYNOPSIS
Who or what is a Caliban? Is he this cross between a human and an animal or a manifestation of a desire?
What is that desire? It is the desire of the "other" to be counted. It is the desire of the fringe to be a part of the mainstream policymaking and the so-called mainstream sensitivity. Our play is not just a re-working of a Shakespeare classic peppered with a collage of texts but a text-body curated voyage to find Caliban amongst the dissident maps in India and Sri Lanka.

All over these countries we are identifying "traitors." Traitors like people who legally question the government on the murder of Lasantha Wickeramatunge; like people who question the years of developmental apathy that led to the multiple flashpoints in Lalgarh, Singur, Nandigram and the fire that rages all along the Bandawan forest; like editors operating in the print-media who are shot dead in the north-east of India on an alarming regularity; like a marginal voice of a human rights activist arguing about the internment of 280,000 Tamils in relief camps in the north and east of Serendip, like people who question the wrist-cutting barbarity in Kalinganagar, like those who are speaking up against the plundering of the Niyamgiri mountains, like the poets who were waging war against aesthetics of the moral police, like the musicians who operate in claustrophobic set-ups where religion is invoked as a convenience to shoot down any possibility of artistic dissent, like an average Timorese street-fighting against the ghosts of the past...like the survivors of forgotten genocides in Nellie, Malom, Mokokchung.....

The play identifies diverse Calibans waging their own battle in south-east Asia and tries to reclaim the Tempest for him. The play dissects, shreds and slashes open the Shakespearean structure and excavates the sub-text of Caliban from the debris of a Prospero-driven rhetoric.

In such times, it is his Tempest that would make us understand the difference between the rule of the law and the rule by the law. And maybe we would finally recognise the "other" as a part of the whole and not the whole of the part.
Using a series of object installations, protest rushes of unedited video footage and a rich mix of physical theatre the play weaves in a series of internal monologues of Calibans trying to unshackle The Tempest. At the end it is the memories of another day that remains. Memories of the body grappling with the distractions of the text.

Rajat kapoor's Hamlet- the Clown Prince
13th September 2009
at the Museum Theatre Egmore at 7 pm

Based on Shakespeare's Hamlet

Language: English and gibberish
Duration: 100 minutes without interval
a cinematograph production

SYNOPSIS
A bunch of clowns are putting up a show of hamlet- they sometimes misinterpret the text, sometimes find new meanings in it, sometimes try and understand it, very often make a mess of it.

They chose to use some phrases from the play and mixed it with gibberish. They even edited the text, threw out some important scenes, and made a mess of the order of things as if the pages got mixed up. But through this all they were simply looking for the essence of hamlet, and trying to find a context in our own times.

Donor Passes are available for these shows at
Landmark - Nungambakkam & City Centre, Nuts & Spices - Adyar & Anna Nagar, Silkworm Boutique - Khader Nawaz Khan Road, Colour Plus - Spencer Plaza, Shilpi - Alwarpet, Nungambakkam.

And daily tickets available at the venue before the show timings

For further details please contact at the following numbers:
Media Mix at 044-2452-7941
Prakriti Foundation at 66848506