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This Hamlet is funny

Photo: R.V. Moorthy

Actor-director Rajat Kapoor

Actor, director, script writer, producer….these are the many faces of Rajat Kapoor. As actor – the elderly uncle in Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding or Preity Zinta’s uncle in Dil Chahta Hai; a s script writer-director in films such as Raghu Romeo, Bheja Fry, Mixed Doubles or Mithya and now Fatso (these are just some of his films by the way). His latest offering Fatso, produced by Pritish Nandy Communications, was screened at the South Asian Film Festival in New York as the centrepiece premiere.

Kapoor is known as a director and producer who refuses to stick to formulaic commercial films with an eye on money. “I have lost money on Raghu Romeo, which didn’t do well commercially, but I stand by the film. I will not do it any other way. I have no regrets about it. I joined Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, with a very clear idea of what I wanted to do. When I came in I knew exactly what I wanted to make and that is what I am doing,” he says in a chat on the telephone.

He started out as assistant to Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani, probably another reason why his sensibility shaped up thus. This is probably why there are films such as Bheja Fry or Mixed Doubles or Fatso, all of which he has scripted, very offbeat but with a fresh lease of common sense. There are no superheroes, just your average next door person (man, woman…irrespective), in very identifiable situations. Even if it meant making a film that he believed in but never got released. “I made Private Detective in ’95, it wasn’t released. I may have had to wait for another 10 years, so what? It is only now that the climate has changed.”

Making films is just an aspect of Rajat Kapoor, he has acted (and continues to do so) in many films. And then there is theatre. He refuses to be drawn into a comparison between theatre and films.

“Both mediums excite me in different ways. There is no comparison between the two, theatre is more immediate…the audience is right there. Films are a different process altogether, there is another kind of thrill in films.” His repertoire includes plays such as C for Clown, Blue Mug and Hamlet – The Clown Prince.

Hamlet…has won many awards and many fans, going by the number of theatre aficionados raving about the play. It has received the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META) in 2009 for Best Play, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress and Best Costume Design.

The play turns the whole perception of Hamlet as a Shakespearean tragedy on its head. Kapoor’s take gives a different spin to what Hamlet has come to stand for. In the play a company of clowns get together and stage Hamlet as they understand it or rather how they misunderstand it. Therefore, there are new meanings, meanings lost, scenes mixed up or given a miss, characters dropped.

Rajat explains, “I find the clown fascinating and it is through the eyes of the clowns I explore Hamlet’s world. There are so many layers to the play that I get to explore by using clowns.”

Of turning the play on its head, a tragedy into a comedy he says, “There is no other way I would do Hamlet.”

He says Bangalore and Rangashankara, the art centre there, are like ‘second home’ because it is ‘familiar space’; Chennai and the MetroPlus Theatre Festival ‘an awesome experience’…. The Company Theatre Mumbai’s Hamlet – The Clown Prince, directed by Rajat Kapoor, will be staged at the Fine Arts Hall in Kochi on November 15.

For details, contact 08089351304

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