Family and Marriage in the Select Plays of Mahesh Dattani

Abstract

Mahesh Dattani was born in Bangalore, Karnataka on 7th August 1958, completed his education from Baldwin High School and St. Joseph College of Arts and Science, Bangalore, a graduate in History, Economics and Political Science and postgraduate in Marketing and Advertising Management. He is the most serious playwright of Indian English Drama today. He is a reputed playwright, director, actor, dancer, teacher and screenplay writer. He has multidimensional facets. He is a versatile playwright. Right from the beginning, he has been attracted towards the world of literature. Mahesh Dattani formed his own playgroup, Playpen in 1984. Playpen is an important performing art group which is very useful and a platform for tyro artist. His plays are performed there. He has not presented conservative subjects but goes beyond the traditional norms and exposes ugly, cheap and filthy things of life. He has crossed all the norms for depicting real life. He has presented social problems such as homosexuality, gay persons, eunuch community, gender discrimination, child sexual abuse, disease and so on. Socio-realistic presentation is found in the plays. Mahesh Dattani, the prolific writer, has been awarded the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award for his book Final Solutions and Other Plays published by East-West Books, Chennai in 1998. He is the first playwright to win this award for his plays in English. During summer sessions programme, at Portland State University, Oregon, USA, Dattani teaches theatre courses. He also conducts workshops at his own theatre Playpen . He writes radio plays for BBC Radio 4. Mahesh Dattani s plays are classified in four Penguin Books entitled as Collected Plays, Collected Plays Volume Two, Brief Candle: Three Plays and Me and My Plays. Further, the plays are divided into three different categories: Stage Plays, Radio Plays and Screenplays. newlineThe present research focuses on the theme of Family and Marriage in the select plays of Mahesh Dattani. Family is a group of people created by blood, marriage and