Authors like Ruskin Bond, Agatha Christie and JK Rowling were part of our growing up days. But when it came to William Shakespeare’s works, be it gauging Hamlet’s grief-stricken soliloquies, or Romeo’s passionate declarations of love, it was important to get a grip on the language and grammar. Writer-director Amitosh Nagpal begs to differ.

“When we were touring the world for shows of Piya Behrupiya, which is a Hindi-Bundeli adaptation of Shakeapeare’s Twelfth Night, we noticed how we had to include subtitles for the audience. This prompted me to think about the importance of language in striking a chord with viewers. In India, the English we speak is very different and layered with accents. The idea then was to adapt a Shakespeare play that a middle-class viewer would enjoy and relate to,” he shares with us over a call, a night before the tenth production of Mandli Talkies’ play, Middle Class Dream of a Summer’s Night, at a city venue.