India’s Play Date with Sweden

WPIC started in Buffalo,USA,more than two decades ago. But the conference,which happens once in every three years,has come a long way,having travelled across the globe. If Mumbai was their last stop in 2009,after Manila in 2003,and Jakarta in 2006,this year the conference will be hosted by Swedish Theatre group Riksteatern in Stockholm. The six-day programme in August will include theatre performances,workshops and readings of shortlisted plays by women playwrights from world over.

An excerpt of Night’s End will be read by a group of Swedish actors and Ramnarayan is eagerly looking forward to it. “Since they belong to a different culture,I am sure they will bring terrific insights,tones and nuances to it,” she says. Novelist and scriptwriter Anuradha Marwah shares similar notions. Her play A Pipe Dream in Delhi follows a group of young street kids in the city who try to stage Robert Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamelin.

“I’m quite intrigued as to how the play will be presented,” says Marwah.

There are two more entries which complete the quartet of selected Indian plays — Jyoti Gajbhiye’s Daahagni and Jyoti Mhapsekar’s March Towards Equality. With both the plays based on women-centric issues,the latter traces the course of the womens’ movement in India over the last 400 years with a special focus on Maharashtra.