Harvest

Manjula PadmanabhanA writer and artist living in New Delhi, she has illustrated twenty-one books for children and drew a daily comic strip called SUKI for six years. She has also published a collection of short stories entitled Hot Death, Cold Soup (Kali for Women). Her two most recent books are Getting There (Picador) a fictionalised memoir and This is SUKI! (Duckfoot Press) an album of her comic strip. Harvest is her fifth play.

"... a fascinating, funny, and frightening glimpse of what happens when we commodify human beings. Although it addresses globalization, the play's issues are universal." Backstage"... When young, unemployed Om lands a coveted job at the mammoth Inter-Planta corporation, his slum life (and that of his Indian family) is transformed overnight. In a Faustian exchange for luxuries like a private bath in his own home, Om has signed away his body parts. In Padmanabhan's witty and fast-paced satirical drama, the new world order is comprised of Receivers and Donors. In the colonialism of the future, the dominant group will pay handsomely for the right to harvest the healthy organs of wealthy westerners." American Theatre Magazine"... a dark fantasy about a high-tech racket in body organs, it posits a not-too-distant future in which a Big Brother-like multinational company, InterPlanta, headhunts for organ donors in third-world countries... the InterPlanta lackeys eventually arrive to take the donor for harvest - and aren't too discriminating about which body they ultimately take." The New York Times"Savage, swiftian and with humour so black that what little laughter it provokes is painful, Manjula Padmanabhan's award-winning play is really an allegory about relationships." India Today"Harvest compels from beginning to end, creating a not-so-fanciful futuristic world that's pretty darned scary." New York Theater