In a series of four-day event, Club Literati organised its concluding event of the Bhopal Shakespeare Festival 2021 on Saturday.
With a registration of 310 participants, this was the 7th year of the festival and even though organised virtually, it was no less than any physical event. Started on April 21 with a Prologue to the Shakespeare and the Brave New World, concluding event was an Epilouge to the same.
The theme was decided keeping in mind the current situation around the globe. The last event was 'As You Like It' a retelling of a Shakespearean scene just the way the participant wanted to do the retelling of a play The participants were asked to send a video of this enactment of some of the famous plays of Shakespeare.
The moderator of the event was Roli Khare. The event started with a generic introduction from Roli, she gave the audience an idea of the theme and the relevance of retelling of the scenes. The judges for the event were Rajula Shah and Kanta Moolchandani.
Both the judges had great experience judging the entries as they saw a different perspective and creativity level of the participants.
The keynote speaker of the session was Seema Raizada who talked about the popularity of Shakespeare's plays that have made them popular choice worldwide for retellings and adaptations. She also highlighted the comparisons and contrasts between the original plays and retellings, and how retellings open up the doors to imagination.
Seema then presented some wonderful videos of adaptations and retellings of Shakespeare's plays. These included some known Bollywood ones like Haider (Hamlet), Maqbool (Macbeth) and Omkara (Othello) and the famous Hollywood adaptations like Forbidden Planet (The Tempest), The Father (King Lear), and 'Romeo and Juliet' a musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. She made a special commentary on Atul Kumar directed 'Piya Behrupiya' a desi retelling on stage of Twelfth Night.
After that the result for the competition 'As you like it' were announced. There were a total of 45 registrations in this catagory and 4 were chosen as winners.
The winning group included Vineeta Bhatnagar dondiyal, Kasturi Kanthan, and Puneet Sikka.
It was retelling of the storm scene in King Lear with a twist titled Go, Goa, Gone. Second were Sia and Kyra Nagpal. It was the famous court scene from The Merchant of Venice.
Siyona Panvalkar enacted Beatrice, and Veer sandhu who altered the famous witches roles in Macbeth. He has invented a good wizard called ‘Gandalf’ there, who stops Macbeth from going the evil way and thus stops a tragedy from unfolding.
At the end, highlights of the four-day festival were shown.