“What do we consider good politics? What’s bad politics? Where does a good politician with good intentions make a crucial, fatal mistake? “It’s only a means towards an end, and that was for me to make a large-scale production about politics today, politicians today and political mechanisms today,” he says.
However, van Hove has resisted the temptation to continually update the technology on the massive stage, sticking with the same nine cameras the production began with seven years ago. Video screens throughout the Festival Theatre and foyer will not only track the action as it unfolds and carry English subtitles, but also scroll constantly updated text information and reactions as if the audience is watching live television coverage. It is not a goal in itself.”Īs well as joining cast members who are between scenes at functioning bars and lounge areas on the stage, patrons can check emails on computers, use multimedia resources to focus on certain situations or tweet messages which are incorporated in the show. Technically, for theatre, it’s quite complicated but if you come to see it, I don’t think people have the feeling that they are looking at a very hi-tech show, because for me technology is only an instrument. “It’s 17 or 18 actors out of 22, and a lot of technicians just to run the show. “There’s 50 people coming over – that’s almost the whole company,’’ van Hove says from its headquarters at Amsterdam’s landmark Stadsschouwburg theatre. So epic is the production that Toneelgroep, the Netherlands’ largest repertory company which stages an average 20 plays a year, has to shut down its other activities just to tour Roman Tragedies. This is visionary director Ivo van Hove and Toneelgroep Amsterdam’s radical reinterpretation of the Bard’s work as a generational political saga, tracking the rise, rhetoric and ramifications of the Roman republic as if it were unfolding like today’s federal election on a 24-hour news cycle.Ī centrepiece of next year’s Adelaide Festival program, Roman Tragedies brings together Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and the less frequently produced Coriolanus, edited to remove the civilian storylines and focus purely on the political narrative. It is Shakespeare as it has never been experienced before: Three plays in almost six hours, without interval, all translated into Dutch, as the audience moves freely in and out of the auditorium – even joining the actors on stage to share a drink and interact in a frenetic multimedia environment. We like to do many things in our lives but we end up doing what is acceptable in the society.ROMAN Tragedies is a radical reworking of three Shakespeare plays by the Netherlands' largest theatre company for next year's Adelaide Festival. This statement is true not only in case of our relationships with the opposite sex but also with the choices we make in our lives in terms of studies we do, profession we choose, the person we get married to and other daily things. It again brings to surface the hypocratic face of the society we live in.
Where the movie scores is the message it gives. In the past I have seen some similar budget movies do well in the box office due to strong story but this movie fails to impress. The pace of the movie is slow with below par production quality. It also leaves some bits hanging without any final answers. The story though had lot of promise, leave us dry and predictable. There is not much to talk about the technicalities of the movie, the new lead actors have managed to do well but the direction and narration by Akhilesh Jaiswal is scratchy.
The series becomes a hit with everyone reading it, enjoying it but not many talking about it. After failing in his attempts to become a mainstream hindi fiction writer he decides to add some masala to his writing and along with a small time publisher starts writing a soft porn series under the name Mastram. His wife was his only supporter in this idea and rest of the world opposes his including his long time friend. He also leaves his job in a bank to pursue his dream career. He tries his luck in various places but fails. Mastram is a story of a struggling writer from Himachal who is trying to realise his dream to become a successful hindi fiction/ love story writer.