ABSTRACT
During the morning of 15 November 1995, at Trivandrum in Kerala, towards the southernmost tip of India, I experienced a performance unlike any I have known before or since1. The theatre and its location, the single actor and what he was wearing, the style of his performance, the drummers, the script, perhaps the time of day, certainly the absence of many of the usual arrangements and equipment for production, my own expectations in this unfamiliar land, and many other factors all combined to make up an event that provided, without any fuss or complicated calculation, a simple and surprising conclusion, one that not only seemed correct and undeniable, but also applicable to almost everything I had previously thought about theatre and much else besides. In particular, it changed my views about Shakespeare's plays and how best they can be staged.
