META 2009: Rajat Kapoor’s play shines
Rajat Kapoor is shooting somewhere in Sikkim (for an Amol Palekar film?). He has just finished shooting for another English film in Shillong. The post-production of his Rectangular Love Story is on. Amidst all this, his first love is flourishing. That first love is no physical being, but theatre, and his play that swept the 4th Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META) in Delhi is Hamlet – the Clown Prince. Congratulatons, Rajat, for coming up trumps through a play that clearly was the audience favourite and the jury’s too.
The festival had quite a few delightful plays, and one among them was Swanand Kirkire’s Aao Saathi Sapna Dekhein. It is the manifestation of all of Swanand’s multi-faceted creativity – direction, acting, singing, poetics….And then, there was Ram Gopal Bajaj’s Layla Majnun, that was next only to Hamlet in the number of awards won, followed by Preeti Vasudevan’s The Absent Lover.
Here are all the winners of the Mahindra Theatre in Excellence Awards 2009:
Category Name Play
Best Play Hamlet – The Clown Prince
Best Director RAJAT KAPOOR Hamlet- The Clown Prince
Best Actor (male) ATUL KUMAR Hamlet- The Clown Prince
Best Actor (female)LAXMI RAWAT Layla Majnun
Best Supporting Actor BANWARI TANEJA Layla Majnun
Best Supporting Actress PUJA SARUP Hamlet- The Clown Prince
Best Original Script ISMAIL CHOONARA & SABIR IRSHAD USMANI Layla Majnun
Best Stage Design DELPHINE CIAVALDINI The Absent Lover
Best Ensemble Actors’ Cult Production, Mumbai
(Ajay Kumar, Amitosh Nagpal, Harsh Khurana,
Jai Hind, Kranti Prakash, Maneesh Verma,
Shiva Chopra, Shyam, Swanand Kirkire, Vega
Tamotia, Viinod Rai, Vinod Nahardhi,
Vishwnath) Aao Saathi Sapna Dekhein
Best Sound Design RAJESH SINGH Layla Majnun
Best Lighting Design LES DICKERT The Absent Lover
Best Costume Design TANYA GHAVRI Hamlet- The Clown Prince
Best Choreography PREETI VASUDEVAN The Absent Lover
The META grand jury comprised M K Raina, Nadira Babbar, Sova Sen, Vinay Pathak and Romesh Chander who judged the ten finalist plays from Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kerala and Assam:
• AAO SAATHI SAPNA DEKHEIN ( A play in Hindi produced by Actors cult production, Mumbai )
• THE ABSENT LOVER (A play in English and French produced by Thresh, Chennai)
• AFSANEH – BAI SE BIOSCOPE TAK (A play in Hindi produced by AK Various productions, Mumbai)
• ALL ABOUT WOMEN (A play in English produced by A K Various Productions, Mumbai)
• AYUSSINTE PUSTHAKAM – THE BOOK OF LIFE (A play in Malayalam produced by Ravivarma Kalanilayam, Kerala )
• HAMLET – THE CLOWN PRINCE (A play in English and gibberish produced by Company Theatre, Mumbai)
• KALIVESHAM (A play in Malayalam produced by Sopanam, Kerala )
• LAYLA MAJNUN (A play in Urdu produced by Shabdaakar, Delhi )
• MADHYABARTINI (A play in Hindi and Assamese produced by Seagull Theatre, Assam)
• SHAKKAR KE PAANCH DAANE (A play in Hindi produced by Aranya, Mumbai)
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Thanks for sharing this with us. It was refreshing to read about something other than cinema, since there isn’t much going on this particular weekend anyway… And Rajat Kapoor is always a favorite. How did “Siddharth the Prisoner” do in cinemas?
Oh… the play is rip-roaringly hilarious! Superbly done- I saw it when it was staged here in Calcutta last year.
Grrr…something always goes wrong with my schedule whenever The Clown Prince plays at Prithvi. I’ve watched C for Clown though. What can I say!!! Watching Rajat Kapoor, Ranvir Shorey, Vinay Pathak in the flesh on stage is such a big thrill!
Utpalda, Madhyabartini kihor uporot asil?
Hamlet has been doing shows all around the country, have to catch it somewhere…
jus curious… no participation from marathi theatre?? isnt it supposed to be the most vibrant??
Hey Thanks a ton for sharing this… Very rarely do we get to read about theatre here..
@Kenny: Madhyabartini is a Tagore play…Baharul did it in Hindi and Assamese, using Kamrupi Dhuliya Circus (acrobat drummers of Kamrup district in Assam, for those who are not aware of it) as a motif…