Re-telling William Shakespeare’s HAMLET: Adishakti Theatre’s A Woman or Not To Be, written and directed by Vinay Kumar.

“I’m expecting a funeral.”

And I was feeling that, I was expecting a funeral.

The first thing that Adishakti Theatre’s A Woman or Not to Be made me feel was validation for my revenge phase, against the reckless driver of my brother’s accident that caused his death.

I sat, watching writer and director Vinay Kumar’s brilliance unfold, one sound cue and theatrical turn at a time, feeling alright about how I’d tried to source a contact in Gurgaon for a gun.

However, when I confessed this to a friend for the first time, I was ridiculed, called crazy, and hurt.

(Relax. This was a decade ago.)

I mean, duh, I was hurt. So was Hamlet.

Did I manage to kill?
Of course not, since I am writing this.

The play made me sit with how grief can wreck the understanding of one’s world.

Things change with death.

Death isn’t about the one who dies; it’s always about the ones who get left behind.

What Hamlet would have to live with is what only Hamlet knows, and maybe the creator of Hamlet.

But the question that Vinay Kumar’s A Woman or Not to Be raised, and I for one judged myself less because of it, was whether my desire to avenge or kill would raise fewer eyebrows had I a flat chest instead of breasts, and a phallus instead of a foetus carrier?

And if I, or the female Hamlet, had gone ahead and killed to satiate the hunger for revenge, would we be considered ill-bred and vile women, or just murderers?

Would we make headlines as female killers or just killers?

Would our grief be measured in accordance with what we carry on our chests, or would we be considered just humans who lost loved ones?

There was a part of me that did want the female Hamlet to go ahead and wage war and kill, but then I was left wondering about my own past phase of revenge, where I got over it and let it go.

Because I remember saying, when my brother passed away, that I don’t wish this circumstance on anyone, not even my enemies, because I know and am in the middle of that pain, which I know I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

So then, how could I kill?
And how could female Hamlet either?

All pictures used in the post are credited and courtesy of Adishakti Theatre.