Actress Ruks Khandagale And Shakespeare Part 21... Jun 2026

5/5 stars

At one point, she rewrites the “All the world’s a stage” speech. Instead of “mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms,” she describes a female actor’s seven ages: from the ingenue who is asked to ‘look pretty while crying,’ to the middle-aged character actress who is told she is ‘too intelligent for the role of Gertrude,’ to the elder who is erased. The audience, largely comprised of theatre practitioners, was seen weeping silently by the second act.

In a series of improvisations documented on grainy cellphone footage (viewable on the National School of Drama’s archives), Khandagale performs Ophelia’s flower distribution scene while physically deconstructing a loom—weaving and unweaving a fabric. The metaphor is explicit: women’s language (Shakespeare’s verse for female characters) is often fragmented, a series of non-sequiturs. Khandagale leans into this fragmentation. She does not try to smooth the edges of the “mad scene”; she sharpens them. She turns the herbs and flowers into weapons, throwing rosemary at Laertes like a dart. Actress Ruks Khandagale and Shakespeare Part 21...

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As Ruks continues to push the boundaries of her craft, we can expect to see her in a wide range of exciting projects, each one showcasing her remarkable range and versatility as an actress. With her eyes on the future, Ruks Khandagale is an actress to watch, and her contributions to the world of Shakespearean theater and beyond are sure to be celebrated for years to come. 5/5 stars At one point, she rewrites the

: Their recent collaboration in episodes like "Hot Chocolate Cake".

Actress Ruks Khandagale and Shakespeare Part 21 is not for everyone. It is for those who believe theatre should sometimes fail spectacularly rather than succeed modestly. Khandagale proves once again that she is not an interpreter of Shakespeare — she is a storm he never saw coming.

This 90-minute one-woman show, directed by the avant-garde feminist filmmaker Arundhati Nag, is set inside a crumbling Victorian proscenium arch. The stage is littered with broken props from previous Shakespeare productions: a rusted crown, a bloodied handkerchief, a shattered mirror. Khandagale enters not as a character, but as an actor arriving late to a rehearsal. She carries a dog-eared Complete Works, but she keeps dropping it.