‘A playwright of world stature’—Mario Relich, Wasafiri On a Muggy Night in Mumbai is the first contemporary Indian play to openly tackle gay themes of love, partnership, trust and betrayal. Kamlesh—young, gay and clinically depressed—invites his friends home ostensibly for an evening of camaraderie. However, with the arrival of his sister and her fiancé, a series of dramatic confrontations is set into motion, leading to startling revelations and unexpected catharsis. ‘At last we have a playwright who gives sixty million English-speaking Indians an identity’—Alyque Padamsee ‘Powerful and disturbing’—The New York Times
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.
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.
Richard Wagner (1813-1883) aimed to be more than just a composer. He set out to redefine opera as a "total work of art" combining the highest aspirations of drama, poetry, the symphony, the visual arts, even religion and philosophy. Equally celebrated and vilified in his own time, Wagner continues to provoke debate today regarding his political legacy as well as his music and aesthetic theories.Wagner and His Worldexamines his works in their intellectual and cultural contexts. Seven original essays investigate such topics as music drama in light of rituals of naming in the composer's works and the politics of genre; the role of leitmotif in Wagner's reception; the urge for extinction inTristan und Isoldeas psychology and symbol; Wagner as his own stage director; his conflicted relationship with pianist-composer Franz Liszt; the anti-French satireEine Kapitulationin the context of the Franco-Prussian War; and responses of Jewish writers and musicians to Wagner's anti-Semitism. In addition to the editor, the contributors are Karol Berger, Leon Botstein, Lydia Goehr, Kenneth Hamilton, Katherine Syer, and Christian Thorau. This book also includes translations of essays, reviews, and memoirs by champions and detractors of Wagner; glimpses into his domestic sphere in Tribschen and Bayreuth; and all of Wagner's program notes to his own works. Introductions and annotations are provided by the editor and David Breckbill, Mary A. Cicora, James Deaville, Annegret Fauser, Steven Huebner, David Trippett, and Nicholas Vazsonyi.
‘A playwright of world stature’—Mario Relich, Wasafiri Mango Soufflé, India's first major gay-themed film, is an adaptation of Mahesh Dattani's seminal play On a Muggy Night in Mumbai. Kamlesh, a young gay man, invites his friends home ostensibly for an evening of camaraderie. However, with the arrival of his sister and her fiancé, a series of dramatic confrontations is set into motion, leading to startling revelations and unexpected catharsis. Directed by Dattani himself, the film made a splash at various film festivals abroad and even won the Mostra Lambda Award for best film at the Barcelona Film Festival in 2002. ‘At last we have a playwright who gives sixty million English-speaking Indians an identity’—Alyque Padamsee ‘Powerful and disturbing’—The New York Times
Ishtyle follows queer South Asian men across borders into gay neighborhoods, nightclubs, bars, and house parties in Bangalore and Chicago. Bringing the cultural practices they are most familiar with into these spaces, these men accent the aesthetics of nightlife cultures through performance. Kareem Khubchandani develops the notion of “ishtyle” to name this accented style, while also showing how brown bodies inadvertently become accents themselves, ornamental inclusions in the racialized grammar of desire. Ishtyle allows us to reimagine a global class perpetually represented as docile and desexualized workers caught in the web of global capitalism. The book highlights a different kind of labor, the embodied work these men do to feel queer and sexy together. Engaging major themes in queer studies, Khubchandani explains how his interlocutors’ performances stage relationships between: colonial law and public sexuality; film divas and queer fans; and race, caste, and desire. Ultimately, the book demonstrates that the unlikely site of nightlife can be a productive venue for the study of global politics and its institutional hierarchies.
Brief Candle: Three Plays brings together the most recent work of Sahitya Akademi award-winner Mahesh Dattani as he continues to explore subjects that need to be addressed but are relentlessly brushed under the carpet of middle-class morality—incest; gender bias and death. The title play is set in a hospital ward where terminally ill patients put up an energetic farce in memory of their friend who died of cancer. The blurring of lines between their romp and the events of their own lives leads to revelations that are both tragic and life-affirming. In the radio play The Girl Who Touched the Stars; Bhavna—now an astronaut ready to take off on a mission into outer space—reflects on her past in this moment of glory; only to confront the bitter truths she has tried to ignore all her life. The fragile fabric of familial relations is ripped apart in Thirty Days in September when memories of a traumatic past return to haunt a mother and her daughter. Playful and poignant; devastating and redemptive; these critically acclaimed plays lay bare the far-reaching consequences of the choices we make; confirming Dattani as one of India’s foremost dramatists.
‘A playwright of world stature’—Mario Relich, Wasafiri In this cleverly constructed radio play, negotiations are underway for an arranged marriage between Alpesh Patel and Lata Gowda. Despite their cultural differences, both their families are desperate for this match. But while all seems genial on the surface, tension simmers beneath the happy facade—for both Alpesh and Lata have their own secrets to hide . . . ‘At last we have a playwright who gives sixty million English-speaking Indians an identity’—Alyque Padamsee ‘Powerful and disturbing’—The New York Times
