The Lyrical and the Intellectual - The Eastern Eye: Column by Dr.Utpal K Banerjee

The Little Clay Cart
Shudraka, the playwright of the well-known Sanskrit play Mrichchakatika (The Little Clay Cart), belonged to the hoary years even prior to the beginning of the first Christian millennium. There is one theory that he wrote under the pseudonym of Shudraka, meaning a "low-caste servant", to imply that he actually completed an unfinished play by Bhasa, Charudattam, calling himself 'the servant' of the well-known dramatist. The other conjecture is that he was, on the contrary, a mighty king of his time. Whatever the reality about the author, the play was a striking departure from the prevailing forms of drama, of necessity, to be written about the royalty and noblemen, as enumerated in the Natya Shastra and, instead, incorporates a large number of peasant characters who speak a wide range of Prakrit dialects. Remarkably enough, the play has been widely staged not merely all over India, but also in the West, namely as a highly romanticized French adaptation, Le Chariot d'enfant, that premiered in Paris in 1850, as well as a critically acclaimed 'anarchist' interpretation, called Le Chariot de terre cuite that was produced by the Theatre de l'oeuvre in 1895.....

Six Characters in Search of an Author
Sei Personaggi in Cerca d'autore (Six Characters in Search of an Author) was a famous Italian play by Luigi Pirandello, written and first performed in 1921. An absurdist meta-theatrical play about the relationship among authors, their characters and theatre practitioners, it premiered at a theatre in Rome to a mixed reception, with shouts from the audience of "Manicomio!" (madhouse) and "Incommensurabile!" (incommensurable), a reaction to the play's illogical progression! Reception improved at subsequent performances, especially after Pirandello provided, in 1925, a foreword clarifying its structure and ideas. The play had its American premiere in 1922 on Broadway and was performed for over a year off-Broadway, beginning in 1963. Astonishingly, this play - together with his Henry the Fourth - has remained the only two most often-performed works by Pirandello, out of his equally remarkable oeuvre of 44 plays, in all!

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