Actress Ruks Khandagale And Shakespeare Part 21 Today

In Part 21’s interpretation of the "To be, or not to be" soliloquy, she delivers it not as Hamlet, but as Gertrude hearing it through a wall. The meaning shifts entirely. "To die, to sleep," becomes not a philosophical musing on suicide, but a mother’s desperate prayer for her son to simply stop self-destructing. It is a reclamation of maternal grief that the original text denies us. Theatre purists often ask: Why do we need a 21st part? Why not just stage Othello as written?

Khandagale’s answer is defiant: "Because the 21st century needs a 21st language. Shakespeare’s women died to teach the men a lesson. In Part 21 , the women survive to teach the audience a lesson."

In a particularly harrowing sequence in Part 21, Khandagale performs the "Sleepwalking Scene" from Macbeth —not as Lady Macbeth, but as every character in the castle simultaneously. She changes her posture and dialect every three seconds. One moment she is the scrubbing hands of the queen; the next, she is the bewildered Physician; the next, the terrified Gentlewoman. It is a tour de force of split-second characterization that leaves the audience breathless. actress ruks khandagale and shakespeare part 21

If you are in Mumbai, catch the final two shows of "Shakespeare Part 21" at the Experimental Theatre, NCPA, on November 15 and 16. Tickets are sold out, but a waiting list is open for the midnight performance.

Fellow thespian Naseeruddin Shah recently remarked, "Most actors play Shakespeare. Ruks interrogates him. She walks into the text like a detective into a crime scene, and she refuses to leave until she knows who swung the sword." In Part 21’s interpretation of the "To be,

If you are just joining this journey, Shakespeare Part 21 is not a sequel to the Bard’s existing 37 plays. Rather, it is a conceptual, performative epic: a 21st-century deconstruction of the Shakespearean canon through a single, unyielding female lens. Part 21 represents the 21st iteration of this experiment—an act of artistic archaeology where Khandagale unearths the forgotten women, the silent maids, the grieving mothers, and the vengeful ghosts that the original texts only hinted at. To understand Part 21, one must first understand Ruks Khandagale. Trained at the National School of Drama (NSD) and a veteran of the Indian independent theatre circuit, Khandagale is known for her chameleonic physicality. She doesn’t just play characters; she possesses states of being . Her previous works—adaptations of Ibsen, Chekhov, and Girish Karnad—have always carried a signature motif: the voice of the voiceless.

The genius of Khandagale’s performance in Part 21 lies in her vocal modulation. For two hours, she shifts between three registers: the soft, pleading verse of the original text ( "If to confess a grievous sin be damned, why then I am damned" ), the glitched, distorted syntax of a corrupted algorithm, and a third, devastatingly modern voice—the voice of a woman reading her own crime statistics with cold, detached fury. It is a reclamation of maternal grief that

Critics have called it "iambic pentameter for the uncanny valley." What sets Ruks Khandagale apart from other classical actors is her use of environmental immersion. In Shakespeare Part 21 , the stage is a diamond of fragmented mirrors. As she moves from character to character—from a grieving Hermione in The Winter’s Tale to a vengeful Tamora in Titus Andronicus —she is forced to confront her own fragmented reflections.