Author: Mahesh Dattani
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 572
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0143032763
Description
Mahesh Dattani is India’s best-known playwright. He is a director, writer and dancer all rolled into one. Writing for the sheer pleasure of communicating with his audience, Dattani is the first Indian playwright writing in English to have won the Sahitya Akademi award. Moored in living social contexts, his plays address questions of sexual identity, religious faith, family ties and gender-issues that are of immense significance to contemporary urban India.
Collected Plays: Volume II showcases Dattani’s talent as a writer and director and his wide thematic and stylistic range. The ten plays in this volume include 30 Days in September, performed extensively in India and abroad to commercial success and critical acclaim, the radio plays aired on BBC Radio and the screen plays of Mango Soufflé (winner of the Best Motion Picture Award at the Barcelona Film Festival), Dance Like a Man (winner of the Best Picture in English awarded by the National Panorama), and Morning Raga, premiered at the Cairo Film Festival and winner of the award for best artistic contribution, that established Dattani as the new voice of contemporary Indian cinema. With a general introduction by Jeremy Mortimer of BBC Radio and introductions to individual plays by actors like Lillete Dubey and Shabana Azmi, the plays in this collection provide fascinating insights into the human psyche and reveal just how caught up we are in the complications and contradictions of our values and assumptions.
REVIEWS
A playwright of world stature
-Mario Relich, Wasafiri
Mr Dattani is a canny and facile writer, Powerful and disturbing.
-Stephen Bruckner, The New York Times
Since Salman Rushdie swung open the door to the West, English language Indian novelists have wowed the world. Indian playwrights have been less conspicuous except for Mahesh Dattani.
-Vibhuti Patel, Newsweek International
Contents
INTRODUCTION
Thirty Days in September
A Stage Play for Three Acts
Clearing the Rubble
A Radio Play for Three Voices
Dance Like a man
A Screenplay co-written with Pamela Rooks
Mango Souffle
A Screenplay
Seven Steps around the fire
A Stage Play
The Swami and Winston
A Radio Play
Morning Raga
A Screenplay
Uma and the Fairy queen
A Radio Play
Ek Alag Mausam
A Screenplay
The Tale of Mother Feeding Her Child
A Radio Play