Founders of Hypokrit Theatre Company Speak on Their Inaugural Bollywood Musical ‘Romeo and Juliet’

Arpita Mukherjee, 29, and Shubhra Prakash, 31, co-founders of Hypokrit Theatre Company, are two South Asian women who prove that it is possible to move past obstacles and make it as artists in the theater community.

Arpita Mukherjee, 29, and Shubhra Prakash, 31, co-founders of Hypokrit Theatre Company, are two South Asian women who prove that it is possible to move past obstacles and make it as artists in the theater community.

Mukherjee and Prakash have diversified themselves in all aspects of theater whether it be writing, directing, acting, or producing. However, it is their backstories on how they came into the theater that shows their true love for the theatrical world.

“I think I see the theater as the place I belong and it has always been a part of my life. Theater is my home,” Prakash said.

Mukherjee, on the other hand, said she was drawn to the theater because of the crazy factor it has to offer.

“I sometimes used to get offended that people would say that artists are ‘off’ or ‘weird’ or ‘crazy,’ but I take that in stride now. Because this is who I am,” she said.

“I’ve left the theater many times but I always come back to them. I am forever compelled by the drama behind the drama,” New York resident Mukherjee added.

Though Mukherjee and Prakash knew they wanted to work in theater, the two women faced challenges when it came to their career in relation to being South Asian.

“I think as South Asian women, we’ve faced a lot of the same hurdles that theater companies face – we spend a lot of time thinking about creative ways to remind people why it’s important to support the arts,” Mukherjee said.

“It seems to me that people are busy and their time is extremely limited,” she added.

But even so, it’s safe to say, the co-directors have managed to create a community of people to come together and support their new initiative.

“I do think that being South Asian women puts us in a unique situation – there’s been a lot of discussions just in the last year about lack of leadership roles in the theater community,”  Mukherjee explained.

Considering the similar type of challenges both women faced in the past, Prakash said it was a careful decision to finally take the leap to start their theater company, knowing that many productions houses struggle to make it.

“I think Shubhra and I started Hypokrit because we’ve experienced that it’s rare in the theater community for women, especially women of color to get opportunities to direct/produce plays,” Prakash said.

Prakash said she and Mukherjee had to find the right reason to put the production company together.

“The question always was, is this the right time? Is this our time? Could we bring anything really valuable that was different from everything that was already out there,” she said. “You can’t just start a theater company. Odds are heavily stacked against you.”

Even with the odds initially not in their favor, Prakash said there is “a lightness to working through obstacles.”

“Now we are able to bring people in and we’re getting more meetings than when we started out,” Mukherjee said.

“Obstacles are what allow stories to exist, though at the time of facing conflict I am not thinking about the story. But as an artist, I am getting inspired to tell the story,” Prakash said.

The two women hope to create many more promising achievements and stories in the future for the Hypokrit Theatre Company.

“I think Hypokrit’s promise lies in three things: Our commitment to multicultural casting, innovative ideas for productions and creating a supportive community,” Prakash said. “I think a great company is one that brings people together.”

Prakash adds: “As long as we continue to try to bring newer audiences to theater and as long as we keep pushing to make multicultural stories and actors mainstream, we have a chance.”

On Jan. 22, at the Hypokrit Theatre Company’s kick-off party in New York City, Executive Producer and CEO of Park Place Group Roger Sengupta presented the co-founders with a certificate of special recognition from Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan).

The award recognized the first time Shakesperean verse is interspersed with Bollywood music and dance, two casts performing “Romeo and Juliet” in repertory, and more than 100 hand-made costumes and jewelry pieces created by artisans in India.

The award also recognized Eamonn Farrell, pioneer in projection design and professor of media design at Princeton University, for his groundbreaking projections to capture the Bollywood aesthetic in an intimate 50-seat black box theatre.

Motivated to show many others what they have to offer, their first official production, “Romeo & Juliet,”  playing through Feb. 22 at The Access Theater in New York City, is a minimalistic styled set, based in New Delhi, India.

“Since our mission is to adapt classics from around the world in a contrasting aesthetic, we were left with many, many options,” Mukherjee said. “My ten years of theater experience have mostly been in Shakespeare and the same goes for Shubhra.”

“The run of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ puts everything we’ve been working towards on the table: risks, innovation, inclusion and imagination,” Prakash said.

The play brings together a group of diverse artists to explore Shakespeare’s love story through a Bollywood lens.

“I would say that our play, as radically re­imagined as it is, honors the language more than many others do,” Prakash said. “It’s a condensed play – we’ve cut it to a good pace even with song and dance, but we’ve worked on the verse extensively.”

Starring Gerrard Lobo and Romeo and Brinda Dixit as Juliet, Mukherjee said the play explores some serious issues, such as the treatment of women, meaningless violence in the urban landscape and the ways power and greed serve as motivators for ‘progress’ and what that means for a city’s story.

“The world we are creating, you won’t be able to keep yourself from being completely immersed in it, and just follow the emotional arc of the story,” she said.

To stay up to date with the latest on Hypokrit Theatre Company, follow them on Twitter and Facebook. For more information and to order tickets to see the play, visit www.hypokritnyc.org.