Shooting Theatre

Due to the pandemic, Aadyam decided to not announce new plays. Instead, it revisited three of their popular plays that were performed on stage without an audience and shot for Aadyam’s Digital Edition. The first play is actor-writer-director Rajat Kapoor’s I Don’t Like It As You Like It that reimagines Shakespeare’s classic As You Like It through clown-style theatre — a play within a play concept where the men and women exchange roles. Excerpts:

As a film and theatre director, how tricky was it in shooting the play and ensuring that the audience feels it is a live performance and not a film or series?
That was the challenge. The attempt was to keep the essence of the play, not to make a film out of it, or even pretend that that could be possible. It was mostly about how does one shoot it in terms of framing it and lensing it. In a play, a lot is happening at any given time. During a digital performance, the audience can choose where to look. The mind decides, and the eye travels from one part of the stage to another, sometimes choosing to watch an actor who does not have lines or is somewhere in the background, but reacting. However, while filming, one is, in a way, directing the eye of the audience and choosing what is to be watched and at which moment. The process is even harder while editing. 

You have worked on a lot of clowns and Shakespearean plays. What draws you towards them both? 
I don’t know what my pull towards clowns is. Maybe it comes from my admiration for Chaplin and Keaton. But, as I worked more with clowns, I realised this might be the purest form of expression — free of social baggage. The mask of the clown frees you and lets you express emotions in their very essence.

What drew you towards As You Like It and tweak it to be a play in a play, with the gender roles reversed?
The fact that Rosalind goes to the forest dressed as a man — Ganymede, and meets her lover Orlando who is pining for Rosalind (but he does not recognise her). The fact that there is a woman who is pretending to be a man, who is pretending to be a woman was my initial pull to this play, and everything came from there.

ON: December 5, 6:45pm 
COST: Rs 399 onwards