A performance of Manjula Padmanabhan's "The Wish"

Something that has been on my to-do list for a while: reading the recently published collections of Manjula Padmanabhan's plays and performance pieces (I have read two of the longer plays so far, “Lights Out” and “The Mating Game Show”, and liked them very much) and doing a conversation around them with Manjula. Hoping to make this happen in the near future. (Volume 1, btw, also includes Manjula’s marvelous “Harvest”, about organ-selling in a futuristic - or is it? - India.)

Meanwhile, the Prakriti Foundation is doing a series of readings/performances from the two collections. Coming up on November 28: "The Wish", directed by Amrith Jayan and Aasthik Shanbag. The registration link for the performance is here. Please try to come for it, and spread the word to others who might be interested. 

Also, a note: “Lights Out” – about a group of middle-class people in a sixth-floor apartment listening to the sounds of a violent crime being committed in the street below – was written in 1984, the same year as the making of the film Party, directed by Manjula’s friend Govind Nihalani; both works share the theme of the elite discussing the suffering of the underprivileged from a safe distance. (Incidentally Gulan and Jayant Kripalani, who acted in Party, staged “Lights Out” a few years later.)

[I wrote about Party here. And here is a poster that Manjula did for another Nihalani film, Ardh Satya.]