New Indian Playwrights – serie

A collection of two plays by Indian playwright Satish Alekar.  Satish Alekar is widely considered one of the most progressive and influential playwrights in modern Indian theatre. This volume brings together two of Alekar’s plays written over half a century apart, The Grand Exit and A Conversation with Dolly.  In The Grand Exit, written in Marathi in 1974, a dead man insists on being cremated in an old crematorium that will soon be privatized. In this irreverent masterpiece, father and son confront the mundane to honor the former’s final wish. A Conversation with Dolly is the most contemporary of Alekar’s plays, and his first to be published before it has been performed. In this play, an old man finds himself locked down during the COVID-19 pandemic, surrounded by Amazon boxes, talking and listening to his devoted nurse Dolly. Both plays are followed by interviews with the playwright which shed light on the origins and design of Alekar’s dramaturgical genius.

Two plays exploring the dark side of power and the human cost of injustice.  What is the fate of justice when morality is subservient to power? What happens when people in power lose their moral compass, and truth becomes a casualty? This volume brings together two recent plays by eminent Indian theater personality Shanta Gokhale that address these burning questions.Maili Chadar; or, The Stained Shawl: A Tragedy in Four Acts traces the regression of the protagonist from the idealism of his youth to the cynicism of a man who has but one goal in life—power at all costs. Along the way, he develops a megalomanic sense of destiny for which he is willing to lose all that he has ever loved, in the process becoming an exemplar of the proverbial worm in the apple called democracy. In Truth and Justice: Four Monologues, women from different places and times speak of what men in power have done to them in the name of their hatred for the other—from the Dreyfus affair that rocked France in the nineteenth century to the deadly communal riots in Gujarat and the Sri Lankan Civil War in the early twenty-first century.

Three plays that seamlessly blend the ageless with the contemporary.Chandrasekhar Kambar, recognized as one of the most progressive and influential playwrights in modern Indian theatre, masterfully transforms traditional religious and folk motifs to deliver a strikingly contemporary message. This volume brings together three of Kambar’s seminal plays from the previous century.In Jokumaraswami, a phallic fertility god worshipped in Karnataka is identified with Basanna, a fearless peasant who defies a tyrannical feudal lord with tragic consequences, embodying the myth of the god in his own heroic journey.Samba Shiva is a lively, rambunctious farce filled with bawdy humor and hilarious situations. Everything is turned on its head: men become women, gods step down from their pedestals out of boredom, kings turn into donkeys, and donkeys into ministers. This acerbic comedy savagely satirizes bureaucracies, hierarchies, and the establishment at large.In Siri Sampige, an ominous prophecy looms over a brave, handsome young prince, the sole heir to the kingdom of Shivapura. An oracle warns that as the prince steps into manhood, he will either become a wandering ascetic or die due to “one who is heir to what he is heir to.” The queen mother attempts to thwart this fate by arranging his marriage to the beautiful princess Siri Sampige, but destiny’s coils tighten, and the prince is ensnared in his foretold fate.

A collection of three plays that fuses the magic of India’s rural traditions with sharp social insight.Blending folktales, myths, rituals, and song, Chandrasekhar Kambar’s plays celebrate India’s vibrant rural heritage while critiquing traditions and power structures that continue to shape Indian society today. From comic spoofs to profound philosophical dramas, his work explores human struggles like power, poverty, and deception that resonate across cultures and borders. This collection brings together three plays that showcase his signature blend of entertainment and social critique. Alibaba and the Forty Thieves transforms a well-known folktale into a clever, comic critique of human greed; Shadow of the Tiger explores illusion, reality, and the elusive nature of truth; and Tukra’s Dream tells the story of a poor villager struggling at the margins of society.  Poetic, powerful, and universal, these plays cast light on the human condition through the rich traditions of rural India.