Shakespeare is very much
alive in different forms and different dialects these days, everywhere around
the world as theatrical celebrations are going on to mark the 450th birth
anniversary of the great playwright. His plays have been adopted, reinterpreted
and localized in diverse cultural contexts. The all time appealing plays hold charisma
for enthusiastic and brilliant contemporary performers of today. Recently, I
had an opportunity to see a couple of plays enacted by different troupes. I saw
The Midsummer Night’s Dream and
Shakespeare came home. Over a period,
many transformations have taken place in the scripts and performances as well. The Midsummer Night’s Dream, a
surrealistic play, is localized by adapting
to the local culture and dialect and
this adaption endears the audience. The rich live Jaipur folk music enlivens and enthralls the audience. The Jaipur traditional costumes and the
contemporary tattoos on face, waist, hands and legs suggest a fusion of
tradition and modernity, a feature of postmodernism. The actors performed
brilliantly with non-stop live music in the background.
Another play titled Shakespeare came Home has a very different
approach. An English professor has conceived and scripted this play in a very
different and novel way. Here, the playwright tries to give a comprehensive
approach to the works of Shakespeare, especially the plays. In this challenging
play, all the prominent characters of Shakespeare’s plays appear on the stage
along with the great playwright and his wife. An English professor, a character
in the play, goes on giving information about the legendary works. The most
interesting thing about this play is that throughout the play the playwright goes
on giving critical analysis of Shakespeare plays and the sources from which he
got inspiration to write the plays. The blend of information and criticism
makes the play more interesting to the audience. The plays are placed under the
scanner and each play’s content is criticized in the context of present
philosophies. Here in this play, it is interesting to note that the character
as Shakespeare’s wife criticizes Taming
of the Shrew in the context of feminism and male chauvinism. Reader’s
response theory ultimately proves that the author is dead and the works are
left to the discretion of the reader. The strong and intense script of this
play represents the Readers’ Response Theory very strongly. Ultimately, the
author is dead, the readers get prominence, and the plays are going to be
interpreted in many ways and in many dialects as never before. In this context, the
above-mentioned play Shakespeare came Home
appears significant.
Shakespeare has been
acclaimed globally long back but now he is accepted and acclaimed locally too
in the remote pockets of the world. No doubt, the great playwright will
continue to inspire future literature also.
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