HAMLETS Live | Episode 5
HAMLETS LIVE is a series of six short online performances spread over six days, where different actors interpret Hamlet’s soliloquies. Each soliloquy responds to the times we live in, revealing a new side of the human psyche.
A sutradhar/narrator takes us through the journey of Hamlet, and poses several questions about Hamlet’s fears, Shakespeare’s choices and our expectations from characters in tragic stories.
Devised and Performed by Padmavati Rao
Language: Hindi
About the Actor
Padmavati Rao is an actor, writer, director, translator and poet. Her presence in theatre and films spans decades. She speaks many languages but prefers writing in Hindi and is a published poet. As an actor she has worked in Kannada, Hindi, English, Marathi and now even Malayalam and Tamil cinema (recent release being Maara).
The Kannada films she has worked in include the still popular Geetha. Her foray into Hindi cinema include blockbuster films such as Pardes, TE3N (pronounced Teen), Padmavat, Raat Akeli Hai, Tanhaji and the recent short film Miniaturist of Junagadh which has won the award for the best film at the International Festivals of Pune and Spain. Her solo show titled Kitchen Poems was performed at the prestigious Theatre Olympics in 2018. In 2021 she made a short five minute film Journey Of A Butterfly which was screened as part of a global project called Theatre Of The Streets.
About the Director-Playwright
Chanakya Vyas is a playwright, director and teacher. His play Algorithms was selected as one of the plays to be translated in Czech, as part of the NAYA/NOVÉ festival. He has studied Devised Theatre and Performance from LISPA, UK on a Charles Wallace India Trust Scholarship (2014). He is also a recipient of the Project 560 grant by India Foundation for the Arts (2020), Ratan Tata Trust Scholarship (2018) and was recently commissioned to direct a play for the Ranga Shankara Theatre Festival (2021). He currently teaches at Head Start Educational Academy and is also a visiting faculty at the Drama School, Mumbai.
About the Production Manager
A graduate from the Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, Samyuktha Manogaran also holds an MBA in Financial Management from Christ University. More enamoured with backstage work than being on stage, Manogaran worked as a programme associate for Ranga Shankara, as a production manager for Sandbox Collective's Smarter Digital Realities, and Gender Bender 2021. She is currently freelancing as a content creator for the Bhoomija Trust.
Her brief accidental stint as a teacher led to her pursuing and completing her B.Ed degree, specialising in English and Business/Management Studies.
