Shakespeare’s works have always fascinated every generation and continue to do so. His works have been tried and tested by different groups in unique styles and substance without altering the main core. Amitesh Grover, a Delhi based director is at the Prithvi Theatre festival with his latest offering ‘The Hamlet Quartet’. “It all started as an NSD venture for an international theatre convention in China where the focus was to relook at Shakespeare in one’s country”,says Amitesh. By relooking and revisiting he meant that one was looking at the contemporary setting of Shakespeare’s works. But why Hamlet among the masterpieces? “I realised that Hamlet was one of his least performed works in our country”,says Amitesh who finds Hamlet one of the most interesting and influential Shakespearean plots set .
Amitesh believes that culture evolves all the time and is a persistent process. Shakespeare’s works have time and again been experimented with by various institutions,professional and amateur artists with respect to specific context. With the writing inspired by ‘Hamletmachine’ by Heiner Muller and Rosencrantz And ‘Guildenstern Are Dead’by Tom Stoppard,the former mainly focus on mapping the explosive political crisis that the world grappled with post world war and post-holocaust.It places the subject in the international arena along with several other identities from various parts of the world and the latter ridicules the existential dilemmas of the same man with warmth, wit and deliberation. The writing here is fresh and although it has been inspired by these texts it manages to bring a lot of novelty to the subject. Keshav Kumar Paroch, who is the writer was asked by Amitesh to write a few scenes who found it extremely fresh and distinctive. “There is a sense of contemporary setting in the play”,says Amitesh.
The main focus of the show revolves and investigates around two areas of conflicts which is firstly the relationship between the right thought and correct consequences. Secondly, it talks about the big conflict between two generations of people and the dilemmas they face while making choices about nationhood,duty,family and love. It looks into the take on love for the family coming first or a prevailing sense of duty.
Having worked with both the mediums of theatre and TV,Amitesh has made use of multimedia as a general trajectory and tried to explore the interoperability between the two media. The TV box entered the premisesof this play with the idea of disconnect that would help put forth the idea of certain scenes in an effective manner. For instance there is a live scene where Hamlet is watching his father through the television. A lot of imagery too has been employed which is open to one’s interpretation and understanding.Ophelia’s death is a matter of perception here where one is compelled to treat it as an accidental event or a deliberate one.
Hindi cinema by far has a lot of parallels drawn with Shakespearean plots. Amitesh points out to one of the most famous scenes of hindi cinema where Rishi Kapoor in ‘Ek Haseena Thi’ invokes a sense of guiltyness in his former lover played by Simi Grewal is actually a ripoff from Hamlet. Likewise there have been numerous cases where plots have been lifted directly from various Shakespeare plays. “ I feel intrigued by the amazing complexity of Shakespeare’s writing and and its transformations”,says Amitesh.
One of interesting features is that the actors involved come from different parts of India. Hamlet played by Vipin Bharadwaj hails from Kashmir while Savitha Rani who essays Ophelia comes from Haryana. Laxmi Rawat who plays Gertrude(Hamlet’s mother) is from Himachal Pradesh and Nitin Bhajjan who plays Polonious and Claudius is from Maharashtra.Amitesh finds beauty in the diversity of their different thick and thin accents of Hindi which add another dimension to the play. “It is a sort of hybrid transformation”,says Amitesh.
Amitesh,a freelance artist who moves from one location to another for new themes and projects is an NSD graduate and then went to study at University of Arts in London.He is currently gearing up for his next international project which is based on developing a relationship between one of India’s first graphic novels and the urban setup.
Published on 14th November,2009 in The Asian Age
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