The small room at the British Council was packed, with people spilling out into the corridors.
Toto Funds the Arts (TFA) celebrated the works of the Bard with After Shakespeare , an event featuring poetry, dramatic monologues, drama, fiction and something quite unique, poetic erasure.
The focus was on “literary responses” to Shakespeare’s works, of writers who use his works to make a comment on their respective contemporary realities, rather than on interpretations or adaptations of his plays.
Anmol Vellani conducted the event with characteristic élan. And the evening saw some good performances.
The first part of the evening revolved around the Bard’s plays, essentially Hamlet .
Om Kamath, a student of theatre personality Kirtana Kumar, read out Carl Sandburg’s They all want to Play Hamlet . Kanchan Bhattacharyya presented Miroslav Holub’s Polonius , who in Hamlet is Ophelia’s father and the chief advisor of King Claudius. The poem was written during the Cold War, in what was then known as Czechoslovakia, and as Anmol pointed out, expressed in some ways a comment by Holub of his contemporary reality.
Nakul Bhalla next performed King Claudius by C.P. Cavafy, a Greek poet of the 20 Century. In this piece, C.P. Cafavy writes “a lawyerly defence” of Claudius.
Lekha Naidu rendered a lovely performance of Margaret Atwood’s dramatic monologue Gertrude Talks Back , in which Gertrude reacts vehemently to Hamlet’s ranting. It had the audience in splits.
Sachin Gurjale next performed Zbigniew Herbert’s Elegy of Fortinbras where Hamlet Fortinbras eulogises Hamlet after his death when he comes to take over Denmark.
The performance by Aarti Aney, Kanchan Bhattacharyya and Kirtana Kumar of Stephen Berkoff’s play, The Secret Love Life of Ophelia an exchange of love letters between Ophelia and Hamlet elicited guffaws for its bawdy humour.
The second part, Poetic Erasures , was curated by Biswamit Dwibedi. Jen Bervin and Stephen Ratcliffe have erased texts from a certain part of Shakespeare’s poems and have created poetic wonders.
The third section had works depicting Shakespeare the person, curated by Kirtana Kumar. Shanaia Kapoor read out poem by John Warren’s Commendatory Poem to the 1640 version of the Sonnets .
Anmol Vellani eloquently read out Jorges Louis Borges’ Everything and Nothing .
The evening concluded with the reading of Shakespeare by Matthew Arnold by Abhijit Sengupta.
