MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Piya Behrupiya, or “The Beloved Imposter” is a Hindi translation and musical adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night by the Company Theater. The play was produced for the World Shakespeare festival in 2012, a celebration of Shakespeare’s plays in 37 languages by companies from 35 countries that was organized by the Royal Shakespeare Company. The play was staged in several countries after its debut, filmed for the popular Indian television channel, Zee, and made available to global audiences on Netflix. Piya Behrupiya thus participates in a broader movement by Indian filmmakers to adapt Shakespeare’s plays to local contexts and export their version of his work to audiences abroad.

This paper examines the ways in which the film adapts Shakespeare’s play to suit Indian theatrical conventions and comic forms. Piya Behrupiya is a hybrid text that combines Shakespeare’s plot and its characters’ English names with references to local places and cultural mores. The entire film takes place on a stage, where a chorus of musician-actors comment on the action and step into the foreground when it is time to play their part in the play. While Twelfth Night sets up clear distinctions between its romantic plot, which is the purview of its aristocratic characters, and the comic plot, which is made up primarily of commoners, Piya Behrupiya’s onstage chorus dissolves these social distinctions. The commentary on the action by members of the chorus likewise highlights the absurd nature of the love triangles in which the main couples find themselves. As a result, I argue that the film offers its audience a more egalitarian and broadly comic version of Shakespeare’s play.