Starchy as they come in her crisp, cool, cotton saris, hair severely scraped into her trademark grey bun, Shanta Gokhale is indubitably the Grande Dame of Marathi theatre-playwright, director and critic for over two decades. With her tart-some say opinionated-reviews in Mumbai's popular English dailies, she is also that most misunderstood of things: a "bridge" between the English-speaking chattering classes and the serious, stolid world of vernacular theatre. "People would always ask me what made Maharashtra's dramatic tradition so rich," she muses. "the question set off a voyage of personal discovery that eventually culminated in a book."

Actually, it's a hefty, 580-page tome titled Playwright at the Centre:Marathi Drama From 1843 to the Present (Seagull), and positioned as the definitive layman's guide to Marathi theatre, past and present. Gokhale cleaves through the gut of ethnic drama, nudging a nuance here, exposing a histrionic foible there, and providing eye-opening English translations for the uninitiated. There is also a cursory look at the historic angle and folk schools, both the mythological dashtavar and the raunchy, ribald tamasha.

Researching the book for over three years, Gokhale ploughed through reams of material. "But what I found was mostly anecdotal, sentimental and nostalgic trivia," she says dismissively, "there was no critical insight that could serve as an irritant or stimulant." Her own nostalgia, however, is reserved for the '70s, the so-called "heyday" of Marathi parallel theatre, when playwrights moved away from emotional themes to universal concerns and existential dilemmas such as the problem of old age in a new society, the inner lives of the mentally disturbed and middle-class sexuality.'

-India Today
May 15, 2000