Topic outline

  • Mahesh DattaniMahesh Dattani is versatile personality - a director, actor, teacher, filmmaker, playwright and writer. He wrote such plays as Final Solutions, Dance Like a Man, Bravely Fought the Queen, On a Muggy Night in Mumbai, Tara, Thirty Days in September and The Big Fat City. Born in Bangalore (1958), he has made significant contribution to the development of Indian English drama and is the first playwright in English to be awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award.

    “The function of the drama,” Dattani remarks, is not merely to reflect the malfunction of the society but to act like freak mirrors in a carnival and to project grotesque images of all that passes for normal in our world. It is ugly, but funny”. His plays are known for addressing issues that society tries to hide or turn its face away from. His plays deal with gender identity, gender discrimination, taboos, domestic violence, and communal tensions. Dattani’s plays are distinguished For their keen insight, delicate aesthetic sense, structural skill, variety, dramatic and theatrical quality of the language, and excellence of stagecraft.

  • Bravely Fought the Queen