Making i-Phone generation connect with the Bard

Bengaluru: To be or not to be a Shakespeare fan , was no choice at all for those hearing a talk on the bard Saturday evening as actor and theatre artiste,  Anirudh Nair took them centuries back into the world of  the famed Globe Theatre, where many of his plays were staged, entertaining both royals and  the plebian masses.

“The Globe Theatre was open to the heavens unlike the theatres of today which have a controlled environment. Back then everything was open to the element of unpredictability,” recounted Anirudh, pointing out,  “Back then, there were no electronic means either to create images and so he had to rely on words and words only to explain any event to an audience. Look at the marvellous job he did in describing war in Henry IV and many other plays. His words built images as there was no lighting and other paraphernalia that we have now. Only grand costumes and words and with that he built images for the audience."

Recalling that the often heard phrase of the time “let’s hear a play” and not watch it, he explained that  hearing  the play was more crucial than watching it. In Shakespeare's plays the audience and the actors were all in the same light and being able to see each other,  went through the same emotions, he recalled.

"The actors of the time were completely dependent on the audience reaction. The actor’s task was to convince  everyone in the audience about  every word he was saying. That was what Shakespeare wanted and that’s what the actors did.”

Taking a leaf from their page, Anirudh himself painted a picture of  the bard's time and his gift for storytelling, drawing  from Macbeth and a series of sonnets that he wrote, bringing home  the extraordinary talent that the poet, playwright and the world's pre-eminent dramatist was.