A dramatic list of plays: ‘I have a dream’ edition
Editor’s note: This is the second installment of our reading of plays—curated by former librarian Phalguni Vittal Rao. Most of the books are free to read on www.thedramalibrary.com along with 400+ other Indian plays in 10 different Indian languages. The Drama Library is a Bhasha Centre initiative. Phalguni has also chosen to include some others from books you can buy.
Written by: Phalguni Vittal Rao is an actor, writer, creator, curator and arts manager. Her written work can be found on Firstpost, The New Indian Express, The Better India, and the Drama School Mumbai newsletter and blog.
It is a strange yet critical time to be alive—we are witnessing a nation and a world change rapidly, where capitalism is glorified and war is the solution for everything. In this liminal time where the future of the world could swing either way, these plays explore the dreams and desires of people who hope to be more than what they are told to be: middle class men seeking a place in a liberalising India of 1990s, ‘Romeo’ and ‘Juliet’ navigating love in a very puritanical Jaipur, and the ultimate Indian nightmare: The job interview.
Seeds of an Apple (Seb ke Beej) by Saudamini Kalra (English): “Sleep, oh youngsters of the nation / I will sing you a lullaby.” Set in the India of 1995, where owning a Bajaj scooter was the ultimate middle class family dream, Saudamini Kalra’s ‘Seb ke Beej’ is a hard-hitting exploration into how toxic masculinity can dismantle the sense of self in a male-dominated society, with little realisation of when the metaphorical sweet apple turned poisonous. The play follows the lives of a group of men who are looking for a place in India’s newly liberalised economy—a small-time journalist eager to win a Bajaj scooter, a father and son who prefer living in their world of illusions and a traumatised survivor of a gang beating. Inspired by the writings of Chuck Palahniuk, Uday Prakash and her personal stories, Saudamini successfully taps into what made these men bitter and how at the root of all of it is a bunch of unfulfilled dreams.
Romeo and Juliet in Smart Cities of Contemporary India by Swapnil Jain (Hindi): We all know the timeless story of Romeo and Juliet. But what happens when Romeo and Juliet have to navigate urban cities in India where landlords brandish their list of unrealistic expectations: “No smoking, no drinking, no non-veg … aur haan, ladkiyaan allowed nahi hain, dost bhi nahi, behen toh bilkul bhi nahi (girls are not allowed, not friends, and definitely not sisters).”
With no other choice, a call-centre worker Mridul takes up the room from Mr Mehta after hunting for over two months. Despite his landlord’s warnings, he still tries to find a way to get his co-worker and girlfriend Vaibhavi to visit him. Set in Jaipur, ‘Romeo and Juliet in Smart Cities of Contemporary India’ takes a deeper look, through a comedic lens, of how love is polarised in today’s India, and what couples have to do to navigate their living spaces to find a teeny tiny shred of privacy where they can giggle and spend time with each other without having to look over their shoulder.
Glitter Punch by Lucy Burke: Set it Salford, UK, the play is a coming-of-age drama about first love. The story follows the lives of sixteen-year-old Molly and twenty-seven-year-old John who meet each other smoking at the bus stop. The play gives a moving insight into the trappings of first crushes and the yearning for love and acceptance. Burke beautifully captures the interiority of Molly’s mind—the speed of thoughts that course through her head versus the nonchalance she displays outwards towards John, the dichotomy of wanting to express love wholeheartedly and not seem that you’re too much to handle, and how the first love feels like a glittery punch in the gut in all its imperfections.
The Interview by Sidharth Kumar (English): Imagine what an interview at one of the largest corporations must be like? For a bright young man fresh out of a job, The Interview by Sidhharth Kumar is like a nightmare come true. The 32-year-old man is met with a torrent of strange questions and tasks—ranging from his personal to professional life, and a constant test of how far he is willing to go to get the job. This play explores a desperate man’s most challenging hour of life—one that a college could never prepare him for. But despite a working environment he doesn’t favour, ‘The Interview’ is a meditation on how we choose things we don’t love but desperately need, and the choices we make along the way to change who we are to fit the things that may not want us as much as we do them.
Amma, what is black pepper in Malayalam? by Nayantara Nayar (English, Malayalam): Most culinary greats have always likened cooking to magic—that memories of a food once tasted are always surrounded by stories of those who made it, the circumstances under which they were made and how one felt when they ate and shared it with the people around. In Nayantara Nayar’s ‘Amma, what is black in Malayalam?’ We see a young female protagonist on stage cooking a traditional Kerala stew called ishtu, as she describes the cooking process and occasionally slips out of her broken mother tongue to share her memories of her grandmother who made the delectable dish for her as a young child.
Cooking one’s family food is tugging on the invisible thread that ties us to our history and ancestors. As she cooks, the protagonist is driven by her memories, and is desperate to remember to speak Malayalam well, hoping that speaking the language and cooking would bring her closer to her dead grandmother. This is also one of the few contemporary plays that proposes live cooking on stage—where the audience will be moved by the olfactory nature of the event and be pulled into the world of the protagonist thinking deeply of her grandmother.
Shikhandi by Faezeh Jalali (English): Shikhandi is known to be one of the earliest trans characters in Indian mythology. Appearing in the epic of Mahabharata, she plays a crucial role in bringing down Bhishma, her arch nemesis, during the battle of Kurukshetra. Written by Faezeh Jalali, Shikhandi is a tongue-in-cheek retelling of a popular myth while questioning gender roles and expectations as Shikhandi fulfils her destiny as a ‘man’—being the cause of Bhishma’s death in the battlefield. With a good mix of physical movement and contemporary English verse, Jalali paints a thought-provoking picture of what it means to be male, female and everything in between.
Love, Bombs and Apples by Hassan Abdulrazzak: Imagine the following in a play: A Palestinian actor who wants to have a one-night stand in Ramallah. A Pakistani-origin man who writes the next “definitive post 9/11 novel” but gets arrested for accidentally putting together a terror manual instead. A young Jewish man has to juggle a Zionist father and a pro-Palestine girlfriend, and asks for a sexual favour at the worst possible time. Whenever we think of stories from West Asia, the expectation is to read a politically correct tragic story.
Award-winning playwright of Iraqi origin Hassan Abdulrazzak challenges that and more in this hilarious and poignant play. The writing is funny, lucid, highly political and thought-provoking. Written as a series of four monologues, the play refuses to portray its characters from a lens of being victims but establishes them as a people with agency and a world of their own, beyond what we see in the news.
