National

Outlook Talks | Chinki Sinha in conversation with Actor, Filmmaker & Playwright Rajat Kapoor

“You will burn and you will burn out; you will be healed and come back again.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov “Is there despair?” “Yes, but also faith,” Rajat Kapoor, actor and filmmaker and also, a man who is passionate about theatre, was reading The Brothers Karamazov on a flight when the idea came to him to adapt the book by the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky into a play. The book was published in 1880. The play frees itself of the location and the time and yet, remains faithful to the emotions in it, he says. There are too many plots in the book. Emotion, crime, erotic, social and ideological and Kapoor says it was a task to do it. But Kapoor is known for this kind of audacity. He has adapted several of Shakespeare’s plays and has even used gibberish in his adaptations which is unconventional. He sticks to the themes. The rest is all his way of looking at a story. The Brothers Karamazov’s adaptation is called Karamjale Brothers and will open to the public in August first week. He talks about adapting the book into a play with Outlook. Karamjale Brothers is set in Old Delhi🌳, which is also where Kapoor hails from.