Some More Sakuntala

To refresh our memories about The Recognition of Sakuntala, we got into groups to discuss the purpose of the prologue for the play and how we could adapt the play for a modern audience to understand. As we reviewed the prologue we saw how it was formatted much like the play in the sense that there was dialogue followed by prose. We felt that the purpose of the prologue was to prepare the audience for the play by telling us the season: summer. By having the characters of the director and the actress it helps to adapt the play for a modern audience as the prologue describes what the audience should anticipate. In order to adapt the play for a modern audience, we decided to set the play in a melodrama so that the audience could easily distinguish the different characters: villain, hero, and heroine. We felt that the sage who had cursed Sakuntala to be the villain as he was the one creating the grief. We would utilize costumes from the original time period but would differentiate from the good and bad characters with colors. So evil characters would wear darker/black clothes and good characters would wear lighter/white clothes.

Other students proposed to omit parts of the poetic stanzas of the play in order to adapt it for a modern audience. By doing so we could make the play easier for a modern audience to understand so that they won't need to try to make sense of the unfamiliar language. Other groups proposed taking the play and setting it in a modern time period. To do so, they would change the names to modern names such as "Elizabeth" or "Jack" instead of using names such as "Sakuntala" or "King Dushyanta." So they would maintain the original plot.