Tom Stoppard visits India to speak at Jaipur Literature Festival

While working at my first professional job, in Bangalore India, I discovered the Bangalore Little Theatre; at the time they were performing  The Norman Conquests, a hilarious triology  set simultaneously in different rooms of the same house.  That’s how I discovered Tom Stoppard and his work.

So I am pleased to report that  Stoppard comes to India to speak on adaptation in plays and films next week.  Stoppard will team up with leading Girish Karnad, David Hare and Annie Proulx at the Jaipur Literature Festival Jan 23 to address a session.

“It is extraordinary that we have on our panel Oscar-winning playwright Tom Stoppard known for his screenplay, ‘Shakespeare in Love‘. It is among the most complex and intelligent screenplays and one of my favorites,” William Dalrymple, co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival and himself a renowned author of numerous books about India, such as White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India.

The writer said the Jaipur Literature Festival was lucky to have Girish Karnad too on same panel. “Girish Karnad is to India what Stoppard is to the West,” Dalrymple said. The way Stoppard has been able to adapt Shakespeare’s plays and life in ‘Shakespeare in Love’ may find an echo in Vishal Bharadwaj’s ‘Omkara’ a hit Bollywood movie based on Othello in an Indian setting,

The 74 year old Stoppard his early life in the country as a student of Mount Hermon American Multi-Racial School in Darjeeling, West Bengal after his family fled the Nazi occupation of Europe. He later renewed his ties with India through “Shakespeare Wallah” – following Stoppard’s  romantic liaison with Felicity Kendal, sister of Jennifer Kendal (wife of actor Shashi Kapoor)