Writers have, over the years, started increasingly revisited male characters through a female lens, questioning how gender shapes power, desire, grief and rage. But what happens when one of literature’s most iconic male protagonists is rewritten as a woman?
That question lies at the heart of A Woman or Not To Be, a contemporary reimagination of Shakespeare’s tragedy by Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Art Research, set to be staged this weekend. Directed by Vinayakumar, the play places a female Hamlet at the centre of a story that examines revenge, power, and madness through the lens of varied genders from the original.
“It is a reimagination, and the whole play is exploring (the questions), will a female Hamlet have the privilege of a male Hamlet? Will she be able to conceive an idea called revenge? Is revenge male or female?,” says Vinayakumar. The adaptation emerged from conversations around gender and violence. He recalls how discussions following a widely reported acid attack case led the team to revisit Shakespeare’s major works, particularly Hamlet.
Further explaining on what inspired the team to take a different coinage for the classic, he says, “Hamlet is particularly disturbing because his misogyny is camouflaged in male privilege, men’s angst, and disturbance at a psycho-emotional level. By doing so, toxic masculinity can destroy everybody around it, yet it can be looked at as a psychological existentialist mooring of one male person.”
While retaining the spirit of Shakespeare’s original, the production introduces significant departures. In this version, Hamlet is haunted not by the ghost of her father, but by that of her mother. “In the original, Hamlet’s father dies. Here, Hamlet’s mother dies. So the mother’s ghost instigates and asks Hamlet to take revenge. But in this case, a female who’s seen the world differently will tell Hamlet, ‘Don’t do that. Don’t destroy. Go study. Revenge is not going to solve the problem’,” says Vinayakumar. The play also places Hamlet in contemporary settings, including a psychiatric ward, where institutions attempt to diagnose and contain her.
For Vinayakumar, however, the adaptation is as much an internal conversation as it is a theatrical work. “In today’s social landscape, when gender discourses are getting beaten back, this is my humble attempt as a storyteller not to generalise arguments and wipe out a genuine discourse on gender parity,” he says. “This is my own dialogue, my own course correction, my own way. I fumble, I crawl on the question of gender. So each time I perform this play or create it, it is a discourse happening within my own mind. My language is patriarchal. Sometimes, my actions and gaze are patriarchal. These are things I need to cleanse.”
Premiered earlier this year, the 80-minute production has already travelled across multiple cities and completed over 25 performances. Multiple audience members shared the same perspective and views on the play and how they perceived it. One response, Vinayakumar says, has remained memorable. “A lot of women identified with a female Hamlet, her dilemma, and the resolution she made. That’s one of the best parts, and that resolution is not from a male patriarchal heightened revenge perspective. One person told me, ‘I felt like the female Hamlet in me just came out after watching, which is one of the best compliments.”
‘A Woman Or Not To Be’ will open at Alliance Francaise on June 6 at 5 pm and 7.30 pm. Tickets on KYN.