Rajat Kapoor, Kalki Koechlin and team comes to Kochi

Comical version of Shakespearean theatre, 'Nothing like Lear' and 'Hamlet - the clown prince' will be performed on January 29, 2016 at JT Pac, Kochi. The plays directed by noted film-theatre personality Rajat Kapoor is part of the theatre festival spanning over four months, 11 cities and 40 shows. It will be performed by noted Bollywood actors Vinay Pathak, Rachel Dsouza, Kalki Koechlin, Sujay Saple, Neil Bhoopalam, Puja Sarup, Namit Das and Aadar Malik.The festival is said to be India's largest theatre festival spanning over four months, 11 cities and 40 shows .The festival kick-started on January 21, 2016 in Pune, where all the four plays were performed to a full house. Kochi is the second stop and two plays, Nothing like Lear and Hamlet - the clown prince, will be performed in the city.
The highlight of the festival is that all the performers are clowns and speak English and Gibberish. Why clowns? Rajat Kapoor says, 'Clowns do not have social baggage and have a pure line of emotions. The clowns are a useful metaphor and give an insight into the character.' And the next question as to what is Gibberish and why, the director says that it was developed as clowns cannot speak like us and needed a language of their own to communicate. The answer to the most important question, why Shakespeare, is Shakespeare's plays cannot be read, it's supposed to be watched or even better be performed to have a better understanding. His works are relevant and there is a familiarity as human needs are still the same and our emotions are still the same.
Done in a style called devised theatre, the script is written not by one person, but a group of people. Unlike traditional Shakespearean theatre we needn't know the play to enjoy it, but the essence of the play is not lost on the audience. Of the two plays, Nothing like Lear is a one person show starring Vinay Pathak and is interactive theatre. This performance is sure to resonate with most fathers and daughters as Vinay the actor speaks to the audience about the pain he feels as the one he loved the most has left him and gone for good, but the most painful part happens to be the fact that he was forced to perform this play.
Hamlet, the second performance of the day, is about a bunch of clowns putting up a show on Hamlet, and the mishaps that happen during the making. The show is about the clowns trying to interpret Hamlet in their own way and making it relevant to them, just as we're trying to get Shakespeare to be relevant to our own times. They choose to use some phrases from the play, mix it with Gibberish, sometimes edit the text, and throw out some of the important texts, all in all, utter chaos ensuring that the audience laugh their hearts out. Hamlet is performed by Vinay Pathak, Rachel Dsouza, Kalki Koechlin, Sujay Saple, Neil Bhoopalam, Puja Sarup, Namit Das and Aadar Malik.