Collected Plays Volume 3: Second Edition

Description

The tale of a mythic king’s aggression against his offspring, and his desperation to escape the curse of old age laid upon him in the prime of life. The anxieties that torment a middle-class family as their daughter awaits the arrival of the ‘suitable boy’ from abroad whom she has never met. The morphing of the city of Bangalore, whose founding myth celebrates its human ambience, into India’s ‘Silicon Valley’ where strangers are thrown together, get entangled, and are violently pulled apart. In the plays of Girish Karnad, one of our fi nest playwrights, time, family, love, and sexual aggression resound from the mythic past into the contemporary megalopolis. The three plays collected in this volume not only span Karnad’s creative graph from his first play, Yayati, to his most recent, Boiled Beans on Toast, but also chart out the themes that have disturbed and shaped Indian drama since Independence. The volume includes an extensive introduction by theatre scholar Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker, which analyses Karnad's work in the context of modern Indian drama.

About the author:

Girish Karnad, a playwright, film-maker, and actor, writes in Kannada and has translated his plays into English. The International Theatre Centre of UNESCO, Paris, has declared him the World Theatre Ambassador of the International Theater Institute, Paris. He has been honoured with the Padma Bhushan and was also conferred the prestigious Jnanpith and Sahitya Akademi awards. He provided the voice of A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, former President of India, in the audiobook of Kalam's autobiography by Charkha Audiobooks Wings of Fire.

Table of contents

Contents
Introduction by Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker ix
Yayati 1
Wedding Album 77
Boiled Beans on Toast 171
Plays by Girish Karnad 251
Appendix: Note on Translating My Own Plays 253
About the Playwright 259