Collected Plays Volume 2 [Paperback]

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.Th e troubled reign of a fourteenth-century sultan of Delhi helps dramatizethe crisis of secular nationhood in post-Independence India. A twelft hcenturyfolktale about 'transposed heads' offers a path-breaking model fora quintessentially 'Indian' theatre in postcolonial times. The folktale abouta woman with a snake lover explores gender relations within marriage.Individual human sexuality meets the historical debate on violence in Indianculture. The plays in this volume span roughly the first half of the career ofGirish Karnad, one of India's pre-eminent playwrights.The three-volume set of Karnad's Collected Plays brings together Englishversions of his important works. Each volume contains an extensiveintroduction by theatre scholar Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker, Professorof English and Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies, University of Wisconsin,Madison. The introductions trace the literary and theatrical evolution ofKarnad's work over six decades and position it in the larger context ofmodern Indian drama. In addition, they comment on Karnad's place as authorand translator in a multilingual performance culture and the relation of hisplaywriting to his work in the popular media.CONTENTSIntroduction by Aparna Bhargava Dharwadker viiTAL?-DANDA 1THE FIRE AND THE RAIN 103THE DREAMS OF TIPU SULTAN 177TWO MONOLOGUESFLOWERS 243BROKEN IMAGES 261AppendicesAppendix 1: Note on The Fire and the Rain by Girish Karnad 289Appendix 2: Note on The Dreams of Tipu Sultan by Girish Karnad 303Appendix 3: Note on Flowers by Girish Karnad 304Girish Karnad,Collected Plays Volume 2, author, actor, ex-OUPGirish Karnad, a playwright, film-maker, and actor, writes in Kannada and has translated his plays into English. TheInternational Theatre Centl3