Adishakti’s upcoming play reimagines Hamlet as a woman, forcing us to rethink ideas of privilege and power

It is a continuation of my last play, Bhoomi. My work often returns to debates around gender and agency. In Bhoomi, we explored rape and what happens after — not just punishment, but survival and agency. In society, punishment is often the only conversation we know how to have. You can see this play out repeatedly across the country. With A Woman or Not To Be, I wanted to question certain celebrated male characters in literature such as Hamlet or Rodion Raskolnikov. These characters are venerated. Actors dream of playing them. But they also carry deep misogyny and toxic masculinity which often go unexamined. So, I began to ask — if Hamlet were a woman, would she still have the privilege to be destructive, moody or emotionally unstable in the same way? Would society allow that space? This is where the play began.

In our version, it is the mother who dies, not the father. Mothers are often conditioned to maintain the family structure. Even if something terrible happens, they may still try to protect the system. So, the mother in our play discourages revenge. She tells her daughter to move on. This creates a strong emotional debate around gender, duty and agency.

We are not glorifying ‘strength’ in an activist sense. Instead, we are examining how much space a woman truly has within existing systems. Women are strong as individuals. The question is — does society allow that strength to be expressed? The play explores this tension.

Yes! We focused mainly on Hamlet, the mother, the uncle and selected secondary characters. In Shakespeare’s version, many die. In our retelling, nobody dies. Destruction is not the only way forward. We also broke the linear structure. Hamlet appears in different contexts — a psychiatric ward, a prison — allowing us to question how society reads her behaviour.

This play has more spoken dialogue than most Adishakti productions. The text is very important and we worked with a fully written script. Still, movement and physicality remain part of the storytelling.

Yes! You constantly feel this woman wanting to act, but being restricted. The sense of vulnerability and powerlessness becomes stronger. It leaves an emotional residue in the viewer.

I do not claim to speak for women. I am a man reflecting on my own conditioning. These works are part of my own gender correction — questioning the patriarchal lens I was raised with. If women connect with it, that is meaningful. But I am not offering solutions.

Finding the form. The text is like water. It needs the right vessel. Arriving at that vessel is the hardest part. Also, working with a new group of actors meant discovering their strengths and shaping the work around them.

Possibly. These texts are widely celebrated, but the misogyny within them cannot remain hidden. The beauty of language cannot excuse toxic masculinity. So, retelling becomes a philosophical act — questioning what we accept as noble or heroic.