BRIEF CANDLE , livre ebook

Three powerful plays of contemporary urban life from one of India’s best-known playwrights
Brief Candle:Three Plays brings together the most recent work of Sahitya Akademi Award-winner Mahesh Dattani as he continues to explore subjects that need to be addressed but are relentlessly brushed under the carpet of middle-class morality—incest, gender bias and death.
The title play is set in a hospital ward where terminally ill patients put up an energetic farce in memory of their friend who died of cancer. The blurring of lines between their romp and the events of their own lives leads to revelations that are both tragic and life-affirming. In the radio play The Girl Who Touched the Stars , Bhavna—now an astronaut ready to take off on a mission into outer space—reflects on her past in this moment of glory, only to confront the bitter truths she has tried to ignore all her life. The fragile fabric of familial relations is ripped apart in Thirty Days in September when memories of a traumatic past return to haunt a mother and her daughter.
Playful and poignant, devastating and redemptive, these critically acclaimed plays lay bare the far-reaching consequences of the choices we make, confirming Dattani as one of India’s foremost dramatists.
Cover photograph by Natasha Hemrajani shows Suchitra Pillai in a scene from Brief Candle
PENGUIN BOOKS BRIEF CANDLE
Mahesh Dattani is a playwright, screenwriter, film-maker and stage director with several scripts and productions to his credit.
As a writer, he was awarded the prestigious Sahitya Akademi award in 1998. He has directed and scripted critically acclaimed films like Mango Soufflé and Morning Raga . His screenplays, along with his stage plays, have been published by Penguin.
Dattani is also a workshop facilitator for several writing and acting courses, having conducted workshops in many parts of the world, most notably at Portland State University in Oregon, USA. He has collaborated with international theatre companies like Border Crossings, most recently at Shanghai with Chinese, Swedish and English actors. He also writes scripts for BBC Radio 4.
His current works include a stage adaptation of Paulo Coelho’s classic best-seller The Alchemist and also the script of Brief Candle , directed by Lillete Dubey.
PRAISE FOR MAHESH DATTANI
‘Powerful and disturbing’—D.J.R. Bruckner, The New York Times
‘A playwright of world stature’—Mario Relich, Wasafiri
‘One of India’s most serious and well-known playwrights writing on contemporary Indian themes’—Alexandra Viets, The International Herald Tribune
‘At last we have a playwright who gives sixty million English-speaking Indians an identity’—Alyque Padamsee
BRIEF CANDLE
Three Plays
Mahesh Dattani
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published by Penguin Books India 2010
Copyright © Mahesh Dartani 2010
Copyright for the notes on the plays vests with the respective contributors
Thirty Days in September was first published by Penguin Books India in Collected Plays Volume Two: Screen, Stage and Radio Plays 2005
All rights reserved
All performing rights rest with the author. For performance rights, please ask for permission before starting rehearsals. You can write to mahesh.dattani@gmail.com
ISBN: 978-01-4341-567-1
This digital edition published in 2011.
e-ISBN : 978-81-8475-299-1
This e-book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser and without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above-mentioned publisher of this e-book.
For my mother Jaya Gowri. The true token of her unconditional love was her patience and presence on opening nights!
CONTENTS
Copyright
Brief Candle
A Stage Play
The Girl Who Touched the Stars
A Radio Play
Thirty Days in September
A Stage Play in Three Acts
BRIEF CANDLE
A Dance between Love and Death A Stage Play
A Note on the Play
Why do I write such heavy plays? This is a question that comes to me quite often, especially in the context of my two recent plays Thirty Days in September and Brief Candle . The question implies that the theatre is meant for lighter fare and nobody wants to go to the theatre to experience anything ‘heavy’ because life is heavy already. So in response to that question I can only ask another—‘Why do we lead such heavy lives?’
Without indulging in philosophical speculations, if we feel the unbearable heaviness of being, perhaps we can think of lessening the burden of stress, emotional turmoil, guilt or whatever it is that is adding to all that baggage that we carry around. So wouldn’t it be a good idea if we at least acknowledged that burden in our plays or cinema? Why can’t we allow theatre to do what it has been doing for thousands of years? Provide a pathway to our feelings and concerns so that we can look at life and its vicissitudes squarely in the mirror without having to wear a mask of placid existence?
In Brief Candle I have in fact attempted to work on that thin line that defines comedy from tragedy. In the play you have survivors of cancer who are in the process of putting up a comedy play as a fundraiser for their hospice. Usually it is the mask of comedy that we tend to hide behind. In the play the mask of death is predominant almost to the point of ridicule. In that sense I do see the play more as a comedy with a flaw. As one of my characters puts it, ‘In comedy, people don’t die.’ However, if we can view death with the same distance as we do comedy, then maybe it is not a comedy with a flaw anymore.
Thirty Days in September was written almost a decade ago, as a result of a commission from RAHI, a support group for people who have experienced sexual abuse in their childhood, mostly incest. At the time of writing it, there was no way I could look at a humorous side. To me, childhood sexual abuse seems too heinous a crime for me to even consider a funny side to it. There is no funny side. It is both a crime against the body as it is a crime against the mind. It is a play that continues to draw that question about writing heavy plays. It has sealed my fate as a ‘serious’ writer. I only have this to say in defence that writing comedy is serious business as well. In that sense every writer is a ‘serious’ one.
I am deeply indebted to Lillete Dubey and her Prime Time Theatre Company that produced these two plays. I am touched by Lillete’s trust in me. She agreed to do Thirty Days in September even before she had read the complete play. As for Brief Candle , she announced the play even before I had written it. In return I trust her implicitly with her directorial vision and rarely have I intervened during her creative process with the actors. All creativity is about exploration, openness and a willingness to look at life again from a different perspective. It is rarely a result of flashes of genius but more an outcome of hard work, focus and unwavering passion. In that sense, my relationship with Lillete Dubey is always about exploring and creating spaces for the magic of theatre to happen.
Mahesh Dattani
Brief Candle was first performed on 5 July 2009 at Sophia Bhabha Hall, Mumbai, by Prime Time Theatre Company with the following cast in order of appearance: DEEPIKA DAVE Manasi Parekh MAHESH TAWADE Sachit Puranik AMARINDER Amar Talwar AMOL Joy Sengupta SHANTI Suchitra Pillai VIKAS Zafar Karchiwala Producer and Director Lillete Dubey Sets Lillete Dubey and Bhola Sharma Lights Inaayat Ali Sami Costumes Trishna Popat Stage Manager Altaf Sheikh

A composite set. A gauze curtain will separate spaces. The hotel rooms will remain the same except the number will change from 206 to 208 .
One curtain partially covers a large ‘Face of Cancer’. This is a large three-dimensional mask. A step can take the actor to a position above the head. The lower lip protrudes to become a bench on which an actor can sit .
Note: The Face of Cancer could be abstract, maybe an androgynous face that is melting. Hollow eyes, sallow skin, tufts of hair, etc. A face that is ravaged by the effects of chemotherapy and is now ready to give up the struggle .
On a high level or at the top of the Face, Vikas has a keyboard that he plays in different modes. Piano for the waltz, etc. At times he sets up a percussion groove for a scene .
SCENE I
Deepika Dave escorts Mahesh Tawade into Room 206 .
DEEPIKA . Mr Kulkarni, this is your room which you will be sharing with a Mr Sengupta.
MAHESH . What are you saying? Me share a room?
DEEPIKA . It’s only for the night—
MAHESH . Do you know