The troubled reign of a fourteenth-century sultan of Delhi helps dramatize the crisis of secular nationhood in post-Independence India. A twelfth century folktale about ‘transposed heads’ offers a path-breaking model for a quintessentially ‘Indian’ theatre in postcolonial times. The folktale about a woman with a snake lover explores gender relations within marriage. Individual human sexuality meets the historical debate on violence in Indian culture. The plays in this volume span roughly the first half of the career of Girish Karnad, one of India’s pre-eminent playwrights. The three-volume set of Karnad’s Collected Plays brings together English versions of his important works. Each volume contains an extensive introduction by theatre scholar Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker, Professor of English and Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies, University of Wisconsin–Madison. The introductions trace the literary and theatrical evolution of Karnad’s work over six decades and position it in the larger context of modern Indian drama. In addition, they comment on Karnad’s place as author and translator in a multilingual performance culture and the relation of his playwriting to his work in the popular media. Each of these volumes serves as a collector’s item, making Karnad’s works accessible to theatre lovers worldwide.

This book is the first volume of a collection of plays by Girish Karnard, most of which have been published before by OUP. This volume contains four plays, namely Tughlaq, Hayavadana, Bali: The Sacrifice and Naga-Mandala.

A Yakshagana folk theatre piece, combining music, dance and drama. Two young heroes, Devadatta, a man of the intellect, and Kapila, a man of the body, are both attracted to Padmini, who marries Devadatta. When the rivalry threatens their friendship each man commits suicide by cutting off his own head. Through the intervention of the goddess Kali the men are brought back to life but Padmini accidently mixes the heads up, attaching them to the wrong bodies. A subplot fleshes out the theme of the search for completeness: Hayavadana wants to lose his horse's head and become fully human.

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.

Yayati, Girish Karnard's first play, was written in 1960 and won the Mysore State Award in 1962. It is based on an episode in the Mahabharata, where Yayati, one of the ancestors of the Pandavas, is given the curse of premature old age by his father-in-law, Shukracharya, who is incensed by Yayati's infidelity. Yayati could redeem this curse only if someone was willing to exchange his youth with him. It is his son, Pooru, who finally offers to do this for his father. The play examines the moment of crisis that Pooru's decision sparks, and the dilemma it presents for Yayati, Pooru, and Pooru's young wife.

This book is a collection of plays by one of India's best-known playwrights, and offers for the first time his best known plays published previously by OUP, together in a single volume. The Introduction is by Samik Bandhopadhya, and the plays included are Kamala, Silence! The Court is in Session, Sakharam Binder, The Vultures, Encounter in Umbugland, Kanyadaan, A Friend's Story and Ghashiram Kotwal.

This a collection of four history plays by the eminent author late Girish Karnad. The volume offersKarnad's readers and critics an opportunity for the kind ofdiscerning assessment of his drama that he has favoured andpracticed for several decades.

Satish Alekar has written, acted in, directed, and produced some of the most influential and progressive plays of post-Independence India, and is part of the trinity, with 'Vijay Tendulkar' and 'Mahesh Elkunchwar', that has shaped modern Marathi theatre. Alekar is widely recognized for his ability to portray the many deceptions and fallacies of Indian society, and his plays depict with wit and sensitivity, a world unable to come to terms with modernity and stifled by tradition. The six plays-'The Dread Departure' (Mahanirvan), 'Deluge' (Mahapoor), 'The Terrorist' (Atirekee), 'Dynasts' (Pidhijat), 'Begum Barve', and 'Mickey and the Memsahib' (Mickey ani Memsahib) -are divided thematically into two sections and both sections include introductions by noted theatre critic, Samik Bandyopadhyay. The book also includes an insightful interview of Alekar by Bandyopadhyay, notes on the production histories of the included plays, and a special section containing photographs of the performances of these plays.

In this book, Noam Chomsky reflects on the history of 'generative enterprise' - his approach to the study of languages that revolutionized our understanding of human languages and other cognitive systems.

This is the first Oxford India Paperback printing of this collection. Vijay Tendulkar has been in the vanguard of the Indian theatre for almost forty years. These five plays, translated from the original Marathi, are some of his best known, most socially relevant and also most controversial.