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BOOKS
Native
Ground
New idioms
of Indian drama
By
Harish Trivedi
 |
Modern
Indian Drama: An Anthology
Ed byG.P. Deshpande
Sahitya Academi
Pages: 754
Price: Rs 250 |
In
this anthology of 15 modern plays from the Indian languages in English
translation, the first, Listen, Janamejaya, begins not as the curtain
rises but as "the screen opens". As in most other plays, here
the western-style proscenium curtain does rise and fall but two plays
use the yakshagana hand-held half-curtain, while best of all perhaps
is "a big blue curtain" in yet another play which "enters
the stage from one direction, keeps moving to the other side, and gradually
moves out". Another indicator of the playful interplay between Indian
and western performative modes is the figure of the sutradhar, who served
not only as an impresario but also virtually as a human curtain in Sanskrit
drama. Though all the plays here were written in the past four decades,
three of them put the sutradhar to new use, two more deploy the
comparable Bhagavata character, one has a chakyar from Koodiyattam,
and another, an ustad with a dug-dugi, performing khela with
his troupe.
Thus, the
meta-textual performative devices of traditional Indian drama, whether
classical or folk, mutate and flourish in these modern examples of the
genre (though the uninitiated may possibly mistake them for signs of western
postmodernism). Is the Indian stage, then, the site on which the East
and the West, tradition and modernity, have engaged with each other more
equally and spectacularly than say in Indian poetry and even Indian fiction?
Do Indian playwrights, on native playground, have more to fall back on
and therefore more to interrogate? The editor,
G.P. Deshpande, also the 15th playwright here, has chosen his cast well.
He begins with the canonical quartet of Badal Sircar-Mohan Rakesh-Vijay
Tendulkar-Girish Karnad and exponents of the Sanskritic/folk idiom, and
ends with some "post-Tendulkar" modernists and the politically
committed: Surendra Verma, Mahasweta Devi and Datta Bhagat.
The publishers,
the Sahitya Akademi, are to Indian literature what Doordarshan is to tv:
worthy, over-reaching, gaffe-prone but good value for money. This elegantly
produced, flavoursomely translated, somewhat under-edited, and certainly
under-proofed volume of 754 hardbound pages comes for a mere Rs 250. But
when did you last buy an Akademi book? Do you ever watch DD?
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