Recipient of first Prem Jamwal Youth Art Innovation Award for staging the Hindi adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s popular English play ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at the 2016 Kunwar Viyogi Utsav, Aarushi Thakur Rana is the daughter of Padma Shri awardee Balwant Thakur.She has worked in more than ten plays as a child artist and has participated in various national festivals organised by National School Of Drama and Sangeet Natak Akademi.
Aarushi has acted in major nationally acclaimed productions like Ghumayee, Bawajitto, and Richard III and has established herself as a theatre director to reckon with by adapting and directing a full-length play based on Charles Dickens’ Classic, “Great Expectations”.
The young theatre director has written, designed and directed ‘Henry & Anne’, a play based on the life of Henry VIII and his second wife Anne Boleyn. Aarushi has also been conferred Young Women Achiever Award and Certificate of Excellence by the Nirvana Academy.
At the ‘Cultural Cocktail: Youth for Art’ event, Shakespeare’s huge fan Aarushi Thakur Rana adapted his ‘Twelfth Night’ in Hindi. It is Shakespeare’s most famous comedy with a twist. The comedy hinges on mistaken identity and role reversal.
“I believe in making Shakespeare more available for our own audience because his stories have universal appeal,” Aarushi said. “While reading Macbeth in college, I started wondering why easier translations of Shakespeare were not attempted. Even the Hindi translations are so difficult that they’re nearly impossible to understand.”
The play was a roller-coaster ride for the audience where its love scenes warmed everyone’s heart and its comedy made the audience laugh hard.