The Plays Of Mahesh Dattani

Mahesh Dattani Is India S Best-Known Playwright And The First Indian Playwright Writing In English To Have Won The Sahitya Akademi Award. 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.

Mahesh Dattani is the first Indian-playwright writing in English to be awarded the Sahitya Akademi award. His plays bring Indian drama into the present day in their themes "sexuality, religious tension and gender issues" while still focussing on human relationships and personal and moral choices which are the classic concerns of world drama.

Mahesh Dattani, b. 1958, an Indian English playwright.

Jairaj Parekh and his wife Ratna, aging Bharatnatyam dancers, are engaged in finding a substitute mridangam player to accompany their daughter Lata at her performance at a high-profile dance festival. Lata, in the meantime, nervously awaits the meeting between her parents and Viswas, the young man she wishes to marry. When the four meet, and in the conversations and discussions that follow, the fissures in the relationship between Jairaj and Ratna begin to explode into high-strung battles which lead back to their own youth and the tragedy that lies at the heart of their discord. The younger couple have their own issues to contend with: the obvious mismatch between the two sets of parents, the arguments over Lata’s career as a dancer after marriage and most unsettling of all, Lata’s attempt to balance her parents’ ambition with her own needs and desires. A brilliant study of human relationships and weaknesses framed by the age-old battle between tradition and youthful rebellion, Dance Like a Man has been hailed as one of the best works of the dramatic imagination in recent times.

Provides an international forum where theatrical scholarship and practice can meet.

Mahesh Dattani is the first Indianýplaywright writing in English to be awarded the Sahitya Akademi award. His plays bring Indian drama into the present day in their themesýsexuality, religious tension and gender issuesýwhile still focussing on human relationships and personal and moral choices which are the classic concerns of world drama. Final Solutions, Dance Like a Man and On a Muggy Night in Mumbai have been staged to critical and public acclaim all over the country and abroad, and his radio plays, Seven Steps Around the Fire and Do the Needful, have been aired on BBC radio. The plays in this collection are prefaced by introductions, which provide fascinating insights into the plays-in-performance in the context of Indian and world theatre. These eight plays, widely varied in thematic and stylistic content, are a tribute to the dramatic vision and skill of a man who has transformed the face of urban theatre in India.

The Present Volume Makes A Pioneerng Attempt At Evaluating The Major Plays Of Dattani.