Romeo and Juliet – No Strings Attached returns to Jagriti

The title of Prashanth Nair’s play may bear the names of English literature’s most famous star-crossed lovers, but the writer-director says that William Shakespeare’s tragedy did not inspire his work, Romeo and Juliet — No Strings Attached. “My idea was to have a bunch of marionette puppets break free from their strings at night in an empty auditorium and redo the same story they’d been doing through the day for a couple of years.I wanted to explore if they would do it any differently,” says Prashanth.
So, how did Shakespeare come into the picture? “I happened to revisit the original Shakespearean text of Romeo and Juliet and found that, apart from the obvious love story, that destiny was another important theme — how our destiny is not in the stars, but in our choices. I thought that was pertinent to the basic storyline I had with the puppets,” explains Prashanth.
Another important part of the play-writing process, says Prashanth, was finding a story that the puppets in his play could re-enact. “I was clear that it needed to be a story that we, at least basically, knew. This is so that when the puppets hijack the script, the audiences should know that it is still within the purview of the larger plot if the story,” he says, further explaining his choice of Romeo and Juliet for the outline of his play.
The cast of the play comprises Rijul Ray, Kalyani Nair, Supriya Uthaiah, Christopher Avinash, Shashank Purushotham and Anshul Pathak.
Romeo and Juliet — No Strings Attached is being staged at Jagriti from April 16 to April 19 at 8 pm, and on April 20 at 3 pm and 6.30 pm.