Atul Kumar's Piya Behrupiya coming back to Bangalore this October

I can only do an adaptation of Shakespeare the way it talks to me,” says theatreperson Atul Kumar, whose play Piya Behrupiya is going to be staged in the city early next month. 

Translated (and slightly adapted) from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, a tale of romance and mistaken identities, Piya Behrupiya is presented in the nautanki style and is as vibrant as it can get with music, songs, dance and over the top dialogues taking over the stage.

What’s really unique about the performance, if one can actually call it unique, is the use of various dialects and accents. “The fact that there are different accents in the play was discovered during rehearsals. It was not a conscious decision. I had chosen my actors because they sang well. But then I realised that each of them was from a different region and we decided to play up their manner of speaking,” explains Kumar.

In fact, Kumar believes that the best way to understand Shakespeare is to look beyond the text books. “Some of the best adaptations of Shakespeare’s works have happened outside of England. Once people are not bound by the rigid framework of how people in England saw Shakespeare, they have actually seen the heart of his stories. Some of the best Shakespearean adaptations have come from Japan, Russia, Eastern Europe and even India,” he says, adding, “I think Vishal Bharadwaj’s Maqbool was a fantastic understanding of Macbeth.”

The key, Kumar explains, is to “not be afraid of him”. “I remember Sanjana Kapoor had this beautiful book on Shakespeare’s stories and she would read it out to young boys and girls during the Prithvi Theatre Festival in Mumbai and the way she would read these stories, the kids got hooked on to them,” says Kumar. Atul Kumar also played the role of Hamlet in The Clown Prince and says that if he ever had to do a Shakespearean production in the most predictable way, he’d never do it.

Be at Ranga Shankara, JP Nagar, 2nd Phase, 7.30pm on October 4 and 5; 3.30pm and 7.30pm on October 6.