Imagine a Shakespearean play set in Kashmir, or a key scene where characters get high on mahua? Simon & Schuster India will publish four fresh Indianised adaptations that relook at some of the Bard’s most popular plays. Excerpts from an interview with Megha Mukherjee, editor, Shakespeare in India
Shakespeare
mid-day: Tell us about this idea, why choose these four particular written works (Hamlet, Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth) by Shakespeare?
Megha Mukherjee: THE idea isn’t new. People have adapted Shakespeare’s plays as novels time and again. And a series like this does exist (Hogarth Shakespeare), but not for the Indian context. Which is what is surprising — Shakespeare really works in our context here. Ambition, revenge, lovers’ quarrels, political machinations — we read about these things every single day.
Megha Mukherjee
Clearly, adaptations are possible, as Vishal Bhardwaj has proved not one, but three times. People didn’t need much convincing as far as the idea goes. As for choosing these specific plays, when I was sending the proposal to the authors, I was clear that they could choose whichever play they wanted to work on. So really, the list of plays is their making.
Statue of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Stratford-upon-Avon; (right) Parvati Sharma. PICs COURTESY/FATIMA ALAM, WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
md: Shakespeare’s works are often regarded as the Holy Grail of literature; so what can readers expect in terms of creative liberties with the storyline?
MM: The funny thing is, adaptations in general are very much a Shakespearean endeavour, because that’s what the Bard himself did — profusely and brilliantly. Shakespeare adapted from Roman plays, English histories, the plays of his contemporaries, you name it. Most of his plots weren’t his inventions. What he excelled at was taking from different sources and contexts and making it of his time, his own. That’s what Parvati Sharma, Jeet Thayil, Nisha Susan and Mirza Waheed will be doing — Making the plays their own, in the context they know best. So we’ll see the general themes we see in all of Shakespeare’s plays — love, revenge, hunger for power, miscommunication, indecision — but adapted to the Indian context. The authors have been given full creative liberty to do with the plays what they will. We’ll see novels set in present-day Delhi, in Kashmir, queer characters, people getting high on mahua. It’s going to be a lot of fun!
Orson Welles and Suzanne Cloutier in Othello (1951); (right) Mirza Waheed. PIC COURTESY/MEHVISH
md: How did you pick these writers, and what are their initial reactions to embark on this new adventure?
MM: Everyone’s response all around has (thankfully) been extremely positive. In fact, for most, the instant reaction was a yes. They’ve all been quite excited about the idea right from the get-go.
A scene from Macbeth; (right) Jeet Thayil. PIC COURTESY/Aliasgar Dhariwala for ISSAI RECORDS
To your question about choosing authors, it began with a wish list. And then it was a matter of reaching out to them. Lots of excited and engaged phone calls ensued. Parvati, for example, had a lovely reason why she wanted to do Hamlet. Waheed’s novels are always set in Kashmir, so that was a no-brainer, and he wanted to work on Othello.
A scene from a staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; (right) Nisha Susan
Nisha is a genius when it comes to the comedic voice, so of course she was going to do one of the comedies. Jeet has a penchant for the macabre, and so it had to be Macbeth. The authors had a play in mind already when we spoke. When authors said no it was because of time constraints or prior commitments.
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