THE PEN ALL-INDIA CENTRE & CROSSWORD

invite you

to the Launch of MISTER BEHRAM AND OTHER PLAYS

by GIEVE PATEL

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Date: 10 October 2008 (Friday)
Time: 7 pm
Venue: Crossword Bookstore (Kemp’s Corner)
Mohammed Bhai Mansion (ground floor), Below Kemp’s Corner Flyover
Hughes Road, Mumbai 400 026

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Gieve Patel is a distinguished playwright, painter and poet. The volume Mister Behram and Other Plays, published by Seagull Books, Kolkata, brings together all his three plays, and also includes extensive interviews with Patel.

On the occasion of the launch of the book, Patel will join in a brief discussion of his work, with Arundhathi Subramaniam and Ranjit Hoskote.

The discussion will be followed by a reading of dramatic extracts from two of Patel’s plays, by eminent actors Sabira Merchant, Shernaz Patel, Roger Pereira, Nosherwan Jehangir and Rajit Kapur.

Gieve Patel’s plays explore difficult terrains in human relationships with power and grace. A poet’s delight in the use of language is everywhere evident. About the title play, Mister Behram, the critic Bruce King writes: “… there are rapid shifts in emotional levels, with words uncovering progressively deeper levels of feeling. The work is rich in themes, including self-deception of liberals, the mistreatment of women, the cunning of the underdog, and the sexual drives that find expression in social and political attitudes. This work suggests that the Indian English drama is likely to join the Indian English novel and poetry as worthy of international attention.” (World Literature Today). The late Dhiren Bhagat, writing about another of Patel’s plays in India Today, observed: “Quite possibly, Savaksa is the first great English play to be written by an Indian.”