- News>
- Literary Corner
Stage version of Midnight`s Children to be produced shortly
London, Sept 05: Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie will team up with royal Shakespeare company to produce a stage version of his novel Midnight`s Children.
London, Sept 05: Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie will team up with royal Shakespeare company to produce a stage version of his novel Midnight`s Children.
"I`m delighted that Midnight`s Children is to be staged with such commitment by the RSC, and to be working again with Tim Supple, who made such brilliant version of Haroun and the sea of stories at the national theatre a couple of years ago," India-born Rushdie said in a report in the daily Telegraph.
The company is keen to take the play to India, where the story is set.
Rushdie is expected to make a formal announcement tomorrow in New York, where he is currently based, partly because the universities of Columbia and Michigan are investing "a lot of money" in the project, according to Tim Supple, who will direct the play, Midnight`s Children won Rushdie the Booker Prize in 1981 and the "Booker of Bookers" in 1994 for the best of the winners. The stage version will receive its premiere at the Barbican in London and Apollo`s at New York.
The cast of 20 British Asian actors will be led by Zubin Varla, a Parsee. He has been cast as Saleem Sinai, the central character in the novel who is born "handcuffed to history" at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, as a partitioned India achieves independence from Britain.
The stage version of Midnight`s Children is based on the five-hour screenplay Rushdie wrote for the BBC in 1997. The television dramatisation did not materialise as India refused to allow filming on location. Bureau Report
The company is keen to take the play to India, where the story is set.
Rushdie is expected to make a formal announcement tomorrow in New York, where he is currently based, partly because the universities of Columbia and Michigan are investing "a lot of money" in the project, according to Tim Supple, who will direct the play, Midnight`s Children won Rushdie the Booker Prize in 1981 and the "Booker of Bookers" in 1994 for the best of the winners. The stage version will receive its premiere at the Barbican in London and Apollo`s at New York.
The cast of 20 British Asian actors will be led by Zubin Varla, a Parsee. He has been cast as Saleem Sinai, the central character in the novel who is born "handcuffed to history" at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, as a partitioned India achieves independence from Britain.
The stage version of Midnight`s Children is based on the five-hour screenplay Rushdie wrote for the BBC in 1997. The television dramatisation did not materialise as India refused to allow filming on location. Bureau Report