Actors, Pilgrims, Kings and Gods
The Ramlila of Ramnagar
Anuradha Kapur

Rs 375  £ 12.95  $ 19.95
ISBN 8170460468

The Ramlila at Ramnagar (Benaras) is a unique theatrical and religious event, a month-long enactment of the Ramayana story which is now an annual tradition. The performance covers a whole town and involves an entire community from its Maharaja to its thousands of common people. Men, women and children follow the course of the processional performance, accompanying Rama from his exile to his triumphant return to Ayodhya to partake of the joy and glory of Ramarajya.

Readers are plunged into the rich and lively experience of the Ramlila with its svarupas, effigies, masks, Ramayanis, Vyasas, gods, goddesses, demons and monkeys; with its theatrical gimmickry and spectacle and marvels; with its thronging, surging crowds. Performers and spectators are part of a seamless ceremony; and the readers re-live this whole experience through the vivid pages of Anuradha Kapur's diaries.

The work does many things at the same time. It documents and recreates an event; provides a rare insight into an Indian community's negotiation with religious lore; unravels and explores a unique theatrical tradition; and above all offers us a piece of life-earthy, rumbustious, and sacred.

Charandas Chor
Habib Tanvir

Rs 200  £ 14.95  $ 20.95
ISBN 8170461316

Who're you?' 'A man.' 'I can see that. I'm asking your name and what you do.'
' My name is Charandas and my profession thieving. Taken together that makes me Charandas the thief.' Impudent and irrepressible, Charandas is a thief with a difference. Having vowed never to lie, he manages to keep his work while robbing the rich blind. A typical folk hero, street smart and savvy, he runs rings around the forces of law and order till he comes up against one wall he cannot scale– his own commitment to the truth. And the unexpected twist at the cud of this heart-warming comedy lifts the play onto another plane. Charandas Chor by veteran playwright/director Habib Tanvir, performed by Naya Theatre's Cattisgarhi folk artists, is a contemporary Indian classic. Folk actors on the contemporary stage, vibrant and self-confident, speaking their own dialect and performing their own material, was a novel experiment in Indian theatre. It opened up a new direction in theatre practice. Charandas Chor, performed all over India and at festivals abroad, won the top award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in1982. This volume contains the translated playscript, an introduction to Habib Tanvir's theatre, and a long interview covering the milestones in his career.

Anjum Katyal is an editor and writer who lives and works in Calcutta

Dramatic Moments
Theatre in Calcutta since the 60s
Nemai Ghosh

Rs 900   £ 30.00  $ 55.00
ISBN 81 7046 156 1
Hb: 192 pp 108 b/w photos

Nemai Ghosh is best known for his photographs of Satyajit Ray at work and in his more private moments and moods, and his stills from Ray's films. Ghosh has exhibited at Cannes in 1991, at London in 1992, and several times at Calcutta and Delhi, and published a selection of his Ray collection, Satyajit Ray at 70: Photographs by Nemai Ghosh, with a preface by Henri Cartier-Bresson (Brussels 1991).

His second collection of photographs forms a pictorial history of theatre in Calcutta over the last four decades. He concentrates on the experimental theatre groups of the city and its neighbourhood- more than a hundred of them active at any given point of time. The photographs capture the distinctive individualities of renowned directors, actors and actresses like Shombhu Mitra, Utpal Dutt, Tripti Mitra, Badal Sircar, Ajitesh Bandyopadhyay, Manoj Mitra, Bibhas Chakraborty, Kumar Roy, and others, in perfomance as well as in directorial presence.

Commentaries by theatre critic Samik Bandyopadhyay contextualize the performances that are further illuminated by a selection of readings and memorabilia -poems, directors' notes, interviews, reminiscences.

Light on the Subject
David Hays

Rs 50   £ 12.95  $ 19.95    
ISBN 81 7046 052 2

As a first reader for one who hopes to 'light' a production by himself, this book is aimed primarily at non-professional theatre practitioners, the whole range of amateurs at schools, universities, clubs, experimental groups, etc. who can tackle a speech and part of the visuals, but do not have a clue to the lighting, and get scared off by technology and terminology; but Hays's rich theatre experience of lighting for directors like Elia Kazan and Jose Quintero is recalled in problem-solving contexts, offering the more experienced technician insights into his craft. With his unusual presentation of literary quotations on light and what light does, Hays offers every theatre worker a useful human and creative dimension for lighting as it relates to life and experience. The beginner and the veteran will read this book differently and draw different lessons that should go into the making of different kinds of theatric experience.

David Hays, founder and director of the celebrated National Theatre of the Deaf, USA, studied with the Old Vic in London and the Yale School of Drama, before entering a career designing Broadway and off-Broadway plays, ballets and operas, including thirty ballets for Balanchine and operas for the Metropolitan; and winning awards for his sets for The Quare Fellow and The Balcony.