Mahesh Dattani is much more than 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 Two: Screen, Stage and Radio Plays showcases Dattani’s talent as a writer and director and his wide thematic and stylistic range. The ten plays in this volume include Thirty Days in September, performed extensively in India and abroad to commercial success and critical acclaim, the radio plays aired on BBC Radio and the screenplays of Mango Souffle, Dance Like a Man and Morning Raga, premiered at the Cairo Film Festival and winner of the award for best artistic contribution. With a general introduction by Jeremy Mortimer of BBC Radio and notes on 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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mahesh Dattani
Mahesh Dattani, born in Bangalore on 7 August 1958 studied in Baldwin's High School and St. Joseph's College of Arts and Science, Bangalore. He has worked as a copywriter in an advertising firm and subsequently with his father in the family business. His theatre group Playpen was formed in 1984, and he has directed several plays for them, ranging from classical Greek to contemporary works. In 1986, he wrote his first full-length play, Where there's a Will, and from 1995, he has been working full-time in theatre. In 1998, he set up his own theatre studio dedicated to training and showcasing new talents in acting, directing, and stage writing, the first in the country to sepcifically focus on new works. Dattani is also a film-maker and his films have been screened in India and abroad to critical and public acclaim. His film Dance Like a Man has won the award for the Best Picture in English awarded by the National Panorama. In 1998, Dattani won the Sahitya Akademi award for his book of plays final solutions and ther Plays, published by East-West Books Chennai, thus becoming the first English language playwright to win the award. Dattani teaches theatre course at the summer sessions programme of Portland State University, Oregon, USA, and conducts workshops regularly at his studio and elsewhere. He also writes plays for BBC Radio 4. He lives in Bangalore.
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