In this unusual Marathi play the playwright weaves a complex narrative with just four characters—Begum Barve, a small-time female impersonator who has spent his life playing bit roles in the professional Marathi theatre of the early twentieth century, his exploitative employer, Shyamrao, and two clerks, Jawdekar and Bawdekar. Trapped between sensuous longings and the sordid reality of their humdrum existence, they seek redemption in make-believe. Layers of ...
In an unusually irreverent text that plays with the traditional Marathi musical mode of the mourning keertan and the theme of death, Satish Alekar’s The Dread Departure tells the story of a dead man who will be cremated the way he wants to be and no other way. He lives on as a dead man till he stinks and his son battles with the civic authorities to honour his father’s last wishes, while his widow gets enamoured of a ghostly lover, ‘the third man from the ...