Rajat Kapoor

Film and theatre director Rajat Kapoor and his theatre crew are in Delhi to perform for ‘Hamlet The Clown Prince’ and ‘Nothing Like Lear’.
In a candid conversation, he shared his love for Shakespeare plays and the growing interest of theatre audience in metro cities

How is it bringing back ‘Halmet The Clown Prince’ to Delhi?
This is the 195^th show of ‘Hamlet The Clown Prince’. The first show was staged eight years back. The audiences still love the play, each time we do a show in Delhi. After ‘Hamlet The Clown Prince’, I had no plans to do other Shakespeare plays. After a few years, I decided to take a look at King Lear. I wanted to do it again with clowns- but we also wanted it to look very different from Hamlet- so we decided to do it with just one actor. ‘Nothing Like Lear’ happened in 2012 and till now has done more than 100 shows. Three years after that we did Lear, we did different Shakespeare plays all these years.  In 2016, we opened two new plays- ‘What is done is done’ (adaptation of Macbeth) and ‘I Don’t Like It. As You Like It’. They are relatively new, so have done around 20 shows of these. We have 4 Shakespeare plays- all done by clowns .
What makes you fall in love with Shakespeare’s play and adapt them into today’s time?
Is there any other writer better than Shakespeare? What Shakespeare has done with human emotions no other writer has done? I don’t know any other writer who has written emotions so well like Shakespeare.  None has gone to the depth of human emotions like Shakespeare. Be it the emotion of jealousy in Othello or greed or ambition in Macbeath. That is the reason he has survived for 400 years. We keep looking for a human emotion every time we do a new play. My plays are all my original creations. I take inspiration from Shakespeare’s characters in my plays and make them topical to today’s environment.

How has been the Indian theatre audience response?
Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai theatre audience have very well accepted our plays. We have done the maximum shows of Hamlet (40 shows) in Bangalore and followed by Delhi (20 shows).  We attract a certain part of the population that is the literate audience, young professionals and students who come to watch our plays.