And Shakespeare Part 21 | Actress Ruks Khandagale

The final movement is the most personal. Khandagale plays Prospero—but not as a man. She plays Prospero as a woman who has abandoned her art for revenge and then abandoned revenge for forgiveness. In a stunning 15-minute monologue, she delivers the "Our revels now are ended" speech, but replaces "insubstantial pageant" with "insubstantial identity." She is speaking about her own career, her own sacrifices as a female actor in a male-dominated industry.

When she breaks her staff (a simple bamboo stick), she does not renounce magic. She renounces silence. The stage goes dark, and a single line appears on the mirror: "Part 21: The beginning." actress ruks khandagale and shakespeare part 21

The performance is divided into three distinct movements: The final movement is the most personal

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. In a stunning 15-minute monologue, she delivers the

But Shakespeare eluded her. For years, she felt trapped by the iambic pentameter, the patriarchal structure of the histories, and the tragic fates of heroines like Ophelia, Desdemona, and Lady Macduff. "I realized I was jealous of the men in Shakespeare," Khandagale said in a recent interview at the Prithvi Theatre Festival. "They get the soliloquies of ambition. The women get the songs of madness. So I decided: What if I gave them the soliloquies? All of them."

Thus, Shakespeare Part 21 was born—a solo performance piece that has evolved over 21 distinct "versions" or "acts," each revisiting the same seven archetypes but through a different cultural or temporal lens.