Paul Goodwin must have been around 15 when he read Shakespeare's Macbeth for the first time in school. But he hadn't understood a word then. "Bad teacher," he says. We are sitting inside the Little Theatre of the NCPA where Goodwin has come to conduct auditions for an upcoming production, The Rape of Lucrece, a narrative poem that Shakespeare wrote in 1594, when London was hit by the Bubonic plague. The 59-year-old artistic director of The Shakespeare Edit, a classical theatre company based in London, first brought this production to India last year, as a premiering play at the Centrestage festival. At that time, the play had an Indo-British cast. But Goodwin wanted "a further life to the piece with an all-Indian cast" and thus, here we are.

Goodwin first came across this poem eight years ago during an acting workshop with Cecily Berry at the Royal Shakespeare Society. "It's an impenetrable poem, 1,855 lines. Meant to be read, rather than acted. I found it extraordinary. I was also on the lookout for Shakespeare that was not commonly done. This was written during the plague in London, when he had to stop writing plays because there was no theatre — one in four people kept dying. This poem was a great dramatic voice, I felt, that was kind of a springboard for the rest of his writing, which were mostly the tragedies," Goodwin says, admitting that he has always been drawn to the Bard's later plays, and his favourite would be Cymbeline. "Imogen's character in that play, I feel, is the best female character he ever wrote. Someday, I'd like to direct it when I find the actress to play Imogen."