Raju Parghi 

Indian Drama and the Emergence of Indian Women Playwrights: A Brief Survey

Drama, one of the oldest and highly celebrated literary genres, remains one of the most neglected or partially appreciated genres amidst the world drama and theatre today. The genre believed to have originated in the age of classical Greek, was adopted by University Wits, nurtured by the Elizabethan dramatists and accepted in the later epochs of literary history, has taken different shapes into various national literatures in the world. From Greeks, Romans, and Italians through the Classical, Medieval and Elizabethan Ages till the Modern, Post Modern and the beginning of the New Millennium or Twenty-First century, the lamps of drama have continued to burn and glimmer with the witty and literary oil of industrious dramatists but except the Elizabethan Age it never shone enough to regain its glorious name.
The journey of versatile literary genre drama has been long right from the Medieval Period till twenty- first century and it has undergone a lot of magnificent changes in its technique, narration, presentation, style and form without deviating its effects on the readers /audience. Drama, being one of the most effective literary genres, not only delights the audience/readers but also divulges and unmasks certain follies, exposes biting social evils and unearths baffling human behaviour and interpersonal relationships between the opposite sexes. Other literary genres such as poetry, fiction, and essay as a whole constitute literature, a literature that is mirror of life and society. If literature as a whole is mirror of life and society then drama as its constituent part is base of human emotions where a prescient dramatist pens a play with utmost care and feelings that have to be performed on the stage and witnessed by the audience/readers. Here, it is better to make distinction between drama and theatre. Drama is the body of literature written for performance while theatre is the body of performance. Drama is written, often published and is available to be handed down to future generation not only for study but also for maintaining its history and its role in the society. Theatre is performed and each performance is new, live and has always scope for improvement.
In twenty-first century, theatre is viewed as an industry rather than as an art. It is difficult to perform every written play because of economic reasons and inadequate interests of people to participate and witness it as audience. As a result there has always been fear that drama would disappear from the literary art but then it has not only survived all the hardships but also thrived to move on. Every nation has its own history, culture, tradition and art therefore drama cannot be eliminated or neglected because every individual is a performer in one or the other way. Drama has entertained people in the society and it also has exposed certain harsh realities of mundane day to day life.
The genre has passed a number of phases and has undergone significant changes in its theme, presentation, dramatic techniques and advent of various forms. It seems to be neglected at one stage yet it has never ceased to exist as it evolves around the mundane lives of individuals and controls the human emotions, be it laughter or tears, romance or resistance, celebration or damnation of life. The full qualities of drama are revealed through its presentation on the stage as it exhibits fictions or facts which get momentum in its presentation in front of the public or stage. The private reading of drama does not complete its purpose of writing. The dramatists, director, actors and stage when confluence, produce a total effect and serve the purposes of the dramatist as he speaks to the audience directly through his actors/characters. Drama presents living actions of life. It has intruded into all spheres of lives and activities of human beings. It is never a reproduction rather it is creation through the personality of the dramatist, sense of vision, imagination, experiences and knowledge of the societal events and actions that constitute the birth of a well-structured play. A dramatist evokes laughter, generates tears, mesmerizes at one point, shocks at the other, purifies the emotions and restores at the end. It sensitizes readers and rationalizes audience as well as satirizes the society. In other words, drama controls the emotional capacity of human beings much better than any other literary genre.
Before drama could be fragmented into various forms in the beginning of the twentieth century, at the earliest epoch of the Greek drama, it was divided into two kinds, one is comedy and the other is tragedy, the former dealing with the light side of life and the latter dealing with the dark side. Comedy evokes laughter every now and then and aims at bad time and misunderstanding which creates unexpected tension in the middle but it ends with reunion and a happy note.  In tragedy, the characters are gripped with fate and time which leads to the disaster and downfall at the end. Aristotle in his Poetics defines both the forms of drama tragedy and comedy. Tragedy in Greek drama focuses on the fate of the characters of aristocracy which could be kings and queens, princes and princesses, while comedy deals with the people of less importance and less value. To explain it conspicuously Aristotle’s concept of tragedy is “it is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself.” (Abrams: 173) A tragedy comprises of ‘catharsis’ which means purgation, the hero is neither absolutely good nor completely evil. The actions evoke ‘pity and fear. ‘Hubirs’ that is his pride leads to his ‘hamartia’ that is error of judgment resulting in his tragic fall. The comedy is seen in a different way by Ben Jonson, a contemporary of Shakespeare, emphasizes on the four elements of comedy that leads audience to a completely natural laughter. The four elements of fluids are identified as blood, phlegm, choler (yellow bile) and melancholy (black bile). Both the forms of drama were well received by the audience as the dramatic presentation could create a great impact on the lives of ordinary as well as aristocratic folks of the time. There were many notable dramatists like Sophocles, Aristophanes and Aeschylus etc.  It is noteworthy to point that the drama or any other genre in the ancient literature was dominated by the male writers as history, thinkers, critics, and scholars do not mention the contribution of women. Their literary works produced a lot of women characters in plays but the women dramatists were unheard of.
The historians, feminists, critics, teachers and scholars have attempted to trace out the silence of women in the literary history and canon as to why women failed to write. Women were seen but never heard. Why did women fail to represent themselves in the literary canon of any form till the Seventeenth century? There may be many responses, and points of view of this question expressed by critics and scholars. There may have been plenty of reasons for women’s non-representation in literary canon varying from across the boundaries and cultures. Be it a developed, developing or underdeveloped country, the restrictions for women to enter into the literary activities have been partially similar if not common. Cultural restrictions, traditional barriers, religious norms, poverty, illiteracy, subjugation, suppression and the reasons go on, have been the blocks on the way for women to pen down and articulate their points of views. Women, as per social construct and social device, were considered inferiors and had to play domestic roles in the family and familial role in the society. It becomes crystal clear that the roles women played in the family and as a construct in the society, they played it sincerely and perfectly. Had the patriarchal society given women the role to contribute to the literary canon they would have played it with vitality, vigorously and could have even superseded their male counterparts in various forms of genres? As they often play the role of balancing family, they would have played the role of balancing literary canon without being biased unlike their male counterparts. However, the truth is, women did not appear in the mainstream of literary activities till the second half of the Seventeenth century.
Keeping aside the speculation of unseen women at the literary canon, there arises another query: why did women not contribute to one of the oldest genres, drama if not prose, poetry or fiction? This would fetch numerous arguments and many answers. Perhaps writing plays required a lot of practical necessities like stage, direction, decoration, and actors etc. Perhaps drama is a unique genre of self expression, freedom of speech, and vivid presentation that reach directly to the common people if enacted on the stage. Consciously or unconsciously the fear of women intruding into the boundaries of writing plays might have triggered the men writers not to encourage women venturing into the dramatic creation. It is almost impossible to trace out the women dramatists from Sophocles to Shakespeare as there is no mention of them in the literary history.
There arose a woman dramatist in the Restoration age of English literature, the first woman writer in the literary canon. Aphra Behn, a friend of John Dryden, earned her livelihood by writing plays. She wrote and staged a number of plays proving women’s worth and capabilities in writing good plays. Breaking the barrier and proving the myth wrong, Aphra Behn, a naturally gifted writer created history, being a versatile and one of the leading dramatists of Restoration age of England. She challenged the dominant literary canon’s practice ‘men everywhere’ and dared to write and establish herself as no woman could do ever before. She became mother of all women writers around the world.  
Virginia Woolf hails the contribution of Aphra Behn, a pioneer, and pays tribute to her in the essay “A Room of One’s Own”. Woolf emphasizes significance of Behn’s courage and acknowledges that all women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. Woolf in the same essay also exemplifies portraying Judith Shakespeare; an imagined but equally gifted sister of Shakespeare could not rise above like her brother did under the patriarchal dominance on the stage and the society. Women did not lack genius or skills but they were denied access to the field of drama. Perhaps there were equally competent women dramatists but they remained unseen, unheard and unacknowledged. 
As mentioned earlier, drama has taken different shapes in various national literatures in the contemporary literary canon; women are not far behind now in penning plays on various aspects, subjects, and themes dealing with the contemporary life in the society. Drama now is not the activity of men alone; women have equally embraced it, sometimes even surpassing their male counterparts. Drama, if enacted on the stage, mirrors the contemporary life. In the words of Martin Essline, “theatre is a place where a nation thinks in front of itself”. (Marsh-Lockett: 3) drama has become reflection of socio- political, religious and cultural life of every country.
Women have found drama as a means of expression of their innermost feelings, and exposition of personality. They have been able to reach common people through staging and characterizing themselves in the plays from their own point of view. Drama proves its worth even in the otherwise technologically advanced world of mass communication. It has become a social activity, a political exploration, a cultural expression, religious examination, and personal reflection.
Having stemmed from various national literatures with the distinctive features and purposes, drama undoubtedly has grown to heights at the hands of the male dramatists. The primary purpose of drama had been mere entertainment which later has been transformed into not only serving the purpose of entertainment but educating the audience/readers. Drama gradually led to serious portrayal of the human life and the society, absurdity and psychology, existential and philosophical. As the world became more advanced in science, drama became more complex and complicated. When women adopted the genre it became a means of self revelation, it became the subject of more seriousness and presentation of reality. The seriousness and reality have been rooted in the history of mankind, but women embraced the genre with the purpose to represent themselves from their own points of view, which was not found earlier in the works of male dramatists.
Drama, a well established genre by the male dramatists, Indian women dramatists have utilized it for the purpose of self-expression, and self-determination. The contribution of the Indian women dramatists for various reasons as social factors, economic advancement, political agenda, cultural consequences, religious needs and illiteracy may not be a significant one on par with their men dramatists yet they have broken the silence that persisted for almost hundreds of years in the literary history of drama. Drama in India is still considered like a growing plant in a desert, which is insufficiently watered by various cultures and languages, and has become a powerful tool of expression for multicultural women dramatists in India, as India is a nation of multi-lingual, multi-religions and diverse cultures. Most of the plays are written in regional languages remaining unknown to the people outside states unless they have been either translated into English or other regional languages. Unlike the African American men and women playwrights or playwrights from any other national literatures, the Indian playwrights do not seem to be working together or encouraging one another indicating lack of co-ordination, encouragement and prevailing gender differences.
Nevertheless, Indian drama is not as scanty as thought to be. The field of drama appears gloomy because not much research has been done on the available plays. Though it has not made much impact on the literary canon on par with other literary genres such as poetry and fiction. Perhaps it has remained untouched and uncovered and limited in the traditional and different linguistic regions of India. On the contrary the contribution of the male playwrights such as Mahesh Dattani, Girish Karnard, Vijay Tendulkar, Badal Sirkar, Habib Tanvir, Asif Currimbhoy Mahesh Elkunchwar etc is significant in the initial development of Indian drama in English. These playwrights belonging to different regions and cultures have endeavoured to revolutionize the dramatic significance and history of drama. They have adopted and analyzed, learnt and understood their own respective society and culture and have come out with social, more serious and most often disturbing plays while their counterparts the women playwrights have hardly been seen or heard in the mid twentieth century.
Tutun Mukherji, a well known critic and Professor at Hyderabad central university, has edited an anthology named Staging Resistance: Plays by women in Translation whichgives enormous opportunity to look into the richness of Indian drama in store in the literatures of the regional languages. The anthology contains seventeen plays belonging to ten different official languages of India. These women playwrights, as the title suggests are serious in their tone, theme and characterization. They deal with the real Indian society, the violence and the typical Indian woman's struggle for survival. It certainly deals with women and only women. Therefore there is hardly a domain of life that has been left untouched by these women playwrights of different cultures collectively which seeks attention to analyze the position of women and the different strategies that have to be adopted in order to bring about social change. Their works demand reconsideration and to reformulation certain social constructs, prejudices and paradigms.
Culture and society play a vital role in the recognition and the identity of every individual either a man or a woman. Though the Indian women playwrights do not give much importance to preserve the culture they belong to, yet their artistic expression marks their identity - that they belong to particular culture. It is interesting to acknowledge that these women writers consciously or unconsciously establish themselves through cultural identity and the outcome of their literary art is to journey towards self identity. They long and focus for an ultimate change in the society, change is the motto that they follow.
The Indian Women playwrights have contributed to the genre from the late nineteenth century, though initially their work is not considered extraordinary. Later as the time passed, the situation changed rapidly and women started writing shocking plays. Before English could become lingua franca of India, the earliest plays were written in regional languages, such as Bengali and Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam of which Marathi and Bengali plays were more in number. Interestingly and curiously the regional languages continue to serve as the rich archive of plays written by both women and men. It is in these texts that one feels the pulse of the people of the country, their daily struggles, their problems and difficulties as tangible realities. The issues raised in these plays are amazing in their variety and range, especially with regard to the women’s experiences. Despite English having become a lingua franca in India, plays in English are fewer in number as compared to those written in the other regional languages. One of the main reasons behind women not being able to write in English is because the majority of Indian women have been illiterate from ancient era to the independence of the country. Writing in English was a far fetched expectation; even writing in regional languages appeared to be scanty.
Bharati Sarabhai’s Well of the People (1943) and Two Women (1952) were the first plays in English by a woman. Set in the pre- and post- Independence epoch, the plays differ from each other not only in theme, but also in their mood and treatment. The Well of the People published in 1943, is poetic and symbolic,   and seems to be influenced by Gandhi’s thoughts. The play highlights a moral message that doing service to humanity by making available to many people, the very source of life, water. It carries a strong contemporary appeal and is highly performative with its vivid dramatic aspects. 
The second play Two Women was published in 1952 and presents a fascinating group of women mainly Anuradha, Urvashi, Sudha, Lata, and Miss Boulton. Anuradha is a typical Hindu wife married to a westernized white man, exposing the differences in the married life. Urvashi, Anuradha’s friend is an unsuccessful dancer and a singer. Unhappy and unsuccessful, both of them decide to renounce the world and go to Himalayas. Anuradha’s husband falls sick and the news brings Anuradha back to the family household while her friend falls in love and feels contended with her life. Both of them realize the teaching of Gita that doing one’s duty is better than shying away from it. Both of them represent the faces of typical Indian women.  These women characters successfully attempt to present the opposing pulls, explained through fairly long descriptive passages, between spirituality and materiality, Indianness and westernization, sensitivity and crassness. They comprise a figurative representation of India as a home variously partitioned. Two Women is in prose style while The Well of the People is poetic, like T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral. Sarabhai has written these plays out of her own personal experiences. The Well of the People has its origin in the Haridwar Kumbh Mela, in 1938. Bharati Sarabhai was touched and influenced by a story that appeared in Harijan,  a weekly journal edited by Gandhiji. An old lady who struggles for her livelihood manages to save money and desires to travel to Haridwar. When she realizes that her desire would not be fulfilled she spends her money in digging a well in the village for the benefit of poor. Sarabhai uses this story for her play with her personal symbolism and crafts it into the contemporary social and political situation of Indian society. The old woman can be considered as a representative of all women in India. M. K. Nayak in A History of Indian English Literature acknowledges the contribution of Bharati Sarabhai and hails her being a Gandhian with the feeling of social reforms. She was a freedom fighter in her own way and took part in active politics and was a member of the Indian National Congress, and supported Gandhiji in every attempt to prepare the road to achieve Independence.  She was greatly influenced by Gandhiji’s way of life and his thoughts. Not till the last four decades of the twentieth century was there any notable increase in the number of plays written by women in English.
The women’s contribution in the field of drama though considered limited yet cannot be neglected. The plays of Mahasweta Devi are more powerful in dealing with themes and issues as she herself experiences the condition of the women and the people in general in the north-east states of India. Though her plays are based on the tribal life experiences, yet they have power of universal appeal. She presents the daily life of the tribals of the North-East India who are always deprived of attention and equality in the society. She makes use of history and tradition, culture and religion in order to expose the injustice done to the poor mass. She is the voice of voiceless. Her plays Bayen, Water, Mother of 1084, Aajir have social appeal and they have message to change the certain social system that is harmful to individuals.
Mahasweta Devi, a versatile and prolific writer known for her short stories, novels and drama, is one of the most celebrated for her magnanimous contribution to Indian literature. She believes in practice and not mere preaching. She has been associated with the lives of tribals not only in West Bengal but the neibouring states also. She has been the mouthpiece of the tribals and downtrodden. She is one of those writers who have taken deep interest in the poor and neglected, especially the tribals. As a writer with social service and with an attitude to the feelings and sufferings of the marginalized section of the society, her contributions in various fields as a writer, as a social activist have been recognized by the Government of India conferring on her Sahitya Academy award in 1979 for her novel Aranyer Adhikar, and Padmashree for her active participation in the social activities. Devi’s motivation comes largely from the social and political history. Every creative work of hers, be it short story, novel, essay, or drama, is embedded with social awareness and stark reality. She herself affirms that socio-political history of human development, political affairs, Tebhaga revolt of the Bengal Peasants of the Partition, has highly disturbed her mind and triggered her to respond against the responsible factors that inflict pain upon the helpless human beings. In other words, the innocent often become the victims of the political instability, or economic depression, or communal violence.
Her plays appear in an anthology Mahasweta Devi: Five Plays edited and with introduction by Samik Bandhopadyay. This is a significant exploration of the realities of the working class people living in rural as well as urban areas. The first play in the anthology, Mother of 1084 is about the outcome of the naxalite movement in various parts of West Bengal. It is a play not only about apolitical mother but also indicates the horrifying effects of the violence on the victims as well as on the kith and kin of the victims. Sujata, the protagonist in the play, is presented as a longing and ailing mother who has lost her son Brati, who got brutally killed in the police firing. The title of the play becomes symbolic as Sujata is mother of the corpse number 1084, at the same time she becomes mother of all the victims, especially the young boys who are murdered in the violence in the name of naxalism. Unable to free herself from the clutches of the male dominated society, she also fails to realize her own son’s secret activities for the good cause. After she tries to find out the exact cause of Brati’s killing, her confrontation with Somo’s mother, and Brati’s close friend Nandini, she becomes more courageous to face the suffering. She feels guilty for not knowing her dearest son so well and regrets losing him abruptly on his birthday. She rebels against all the cruel ways adopted by the government and asks the audience at the end of the play to raise their voice against such practices and not to be a mute observer. She ridicules the police accusing them of killing hundreds of innocent youths who raised their voice for a better cause. The play depicts not only political and social scenario but also presents suffering of women directly or indirectly inflicted upon them.
Aajir, is the next play in the anthology dealing with typical Indian situation of post independence era. Perhaps, the only play that deals with the bonded labour or slavery in the Indian society, it is a master craft of Mahasweta as she brings out the issues related to slavery and bonded labour. This also reveals that illiteracy is a curse to the working class people. The play highlights that one of the main causes of the poor being in pathetic condition is illiteracy. It is a fact that even after sixty years of independence, the kith and kin of working class have not been educated. The efforts of the government remain impractical and the right to education has become a dream for working class. The protagonist in the play, Paatan, is a descendent of the family of slaves. His ancestor Golak had sold himself and his family for three rupees. Ignorant of the fact that the bond signed by his ancestor has long been in the ashes, Paatan continues to suffer and be humiliated by his master. His rights to lead a free and happy life have been not only been denied but also his ignorance about the bond which he never signed make him pathetic. The mistress of the landlord craves for sexual urge which she feels only Paatan can satisfy. She plays prankster and puts a condition that if he wanted to be free then he had to fulfill the mistress’s desire first. Paatan realizes the truth that there was never any bond in paper but before he could enjoy the freedom he loses his life.
Bayen, is a powerful portrayal of the miserable and pathetic condition of women in rural India. First written as a short story, the play is about women and their realistic portrayal in the contemporary society. The play also deals with the superstitious belief practiced by the villagers victimizing women every now and then. Chandidasi Gangadasi is a professional gravedigger who buries the dead children and guards them against the wild animals in the night. Her profession lands her in trouble as she is accused of being a witch and be responsible for the death of the children in the village. She is declared an outcast and is left at the outskirts of the village. Helpless and voiceless, Chandidasi exhibits her humane character and gives up her life for averting a train accident. The play portrays the vulnerability of women in rural areas.
Urvashi and Johnny is a symbolic play that deals with emergency period in India. It deals with the love affair of Johnny with Urvashi, a talking-doll. He is brought up in the slums and looks for happiness and runs away from the slums.  Later he decides to amuse the people with his talking-doll tricks. Johnny develops cancer in his throat which stands for the suppression of democratic rights during the Emergency. The love affair comes to an end as he collapses on the stage at the end of the play.
Water is the last play of the anthology dealing with the story of a professional water-diviner, Maghai Dome. He is an untouchable by caste but with his help alone the wells are dug in the village. Ironically, he and the other untouchables of the village are forbidden from fetching water from the wells. Though the government economic and material aid is released Santosh Pujari, the head of the village does not distribute it among them. On the contrary, he subjects them to terrible tortures. Maghai, in order to quench the thirst of his people, with the help of school teacher, agrees to build a dam on the river. This brings clashes between the untouchables and the village head and Maghai is killed at the end. 
Another short story of Mahasweta Devi Rudali has been transformed into drama by Usha Ganguli. The play deals with the pathetic condition of poverty stricken women in the societies, who without a second choice have to adopt unsocial ways for survival. Like Bayen this play portrays the plight of the women and their struggle for the survival. They adopt a profession of crying at the demise of any rich person in the villages. Few of them are ready to embrace prostitution for which they are well paid. These plays of Devi though have been less staged yet they depict a truthful scenario of not only immediate post independence era but the situations can be felt even in contemporary twenty first century. Except Urvashi and Johnny, other plays have emotional appeal and demand social responsibility.
Dina Mehta, a leading and prominent creative writer, is industrious as playwright in India. The play Mythmakers (1967) is about rising communalism in Mumbai against the backdrop of the Bombay film industry. Her most acclaimed play which won the first prize in a worldwide competition sponsored by BBC is Brides are Not for Burning (1993) which raised the curtain as it were on domestic violence that women suffer daily. Resisting the ill-effects of the dowry, the play portrays the terrible malaise of bride burning that haunts the Indian society till today. Young bride Laxmi burns to death and her sister Malini is determined that the culprits, Laxmi’s parents in law and husband, will not go unpunished. In fighting for justice, Malini confronts the society at large that tolerates such crime. Mehta’s fourth play, Getting Away with Murder appears in the anthology Body Blows: Women, Violence and Surival is  a tense and multi-layered text which explores the many dimensions and experiences of women’s lives. Each character reveals a secret sorrow and the most shocking revelation of all is the trauma of child abuse within families which is never exposed.
Manjula Padmanabhan was born in Delhi in 1953, the daughter of a diplomat, and her childhood was spent in Sweden, Pakistan and Thailand. Her primary education has been in Kodaikanal, Tamilnadu and college in Mumbai. She now lives in New Delhi. She is also a skilled, talented and a multi-faceted personality, as she is a playwright, a cartoonist, a novelist and an artist.  She is known internationally only after her play Harvest was selected from around 1500 entries from about 75 countries to win the first prize in the Alexander S. Onassis Award for Theatre, at Athens, in September 1997. 
Harvest, immensely significant and dynamic play, presents a dystopia where the rich of the developed world purchase healthy organs from the poor of the third world. Controlled by technology, the contact between the two segments of the world is not physical but of the virtual kind, the only way that the developed world can remain distant from the third world squalor. With pervasive black humour Padmanabhan emphasizes the business of ‘organ harvesting’ or the way human body becomes commodified – a tradable, saleable thing, and how it can be controlled, and literally owned by means of technology, and exploited. Actually, this no longer remains a distant concept with illegal organ sale, surrogate motherhood and the hiring out of wombs having become grim realities. The powerful play inspired Govind Nihalani’s film Deham in 2001.
Lights Out is Manjula’s first play and it was written and first performed in 1986 at Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai. It was published in a collection called Body Blows – Women, Violence and Survival – Three Plays in 2000. The play also appears in another book called City Plays published by Seagull Books Kolkata. Lights out is a drama of intense human feelings in which the dialogues among the characters in an apartment reveal a gang rape at the end. Every night horrifying screams are heard from an unseen and unknown woman being raped and tortured in the near by flat..
Another contemporary woman dramatist Poile (Ambika) Sengupta is one of India’s foremost playwrights in English. She has written many plays and all her plays have been performed every now and then in Banglore., Mangalam, was written in 1993 and produced the next year. Her other plays include Inner Laws,(1994), A Pretty Business (1995), Keats was a Tuber (1996), Collages (1998), Alipha and Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So Said Shakuni (2001) and Samara’s Song(2007). Mangalam was published by Seagull in Body Blows (2000). An anthology of her plays is awaited. Her first play Mangalam won The Hindu-Madras Players Play-scripts Competition in 1993. This play revolves around a dead person. It shows how abuse and violence continue in every generation and how men and women get carried away in the modern society with their instinctive behaviour.   
The women dramatists discussed above as also those who have not been mentioned have many serious issues to express to bring to the notice of not only the readers but to the audience. The realistic portrayal and display of the prevailing problems in the society, women dramatists have courageously written serious and social plays portraying day to day life of women in the family, profession, community, and the society at large. 
Some of the realistic and contemporary issues related not only to women but also men and children have been seriously dealt by the women playwrights in India. They have been applauded by audience and the critics for having ventured into a less chosen field of literary creativity and eventually displaying it intellectually and effectively. These women playwrights show more concern towards the condition of women in the society be it urban or rural. The Indian society comprises of many variations in its language, culture, tradition, and religious beliefs. It has been quite heartening that women playwrights in India have impressed the audience/readers, critics and scholars across the world partially, though they have not achieved the desired distinction. With Bharti Sarabhai setting the trend of writing drama in Indian English drama added women playwrights to its rich cultural heritage which has remained blank in the classic and modern drama up to pre independence era.
The plays written in India are not scanty as thought to be, the abundance of plays can be found in the various regional literatures. The available plays have not received much awaited and serious the attention of the scholars to translate them into predominant language as English. Lack of encouragement, unwillingness to perform because of lack of fund and interest, lack of knowledge of the classical literature of the past, and gender differences have led drama to remain quite limited and less grown unlike poetry and novels in India. Amidst these practical difficulties and realities it is rare to find women playwrights. There are many issues that bar women from writing plays as gender differences, religious barriers, cultural restrictions, lack of economic support, prevailing prejudices against women (women can not produce good plays), family responsibilities and above all lack of standard education. In spite of these restraints, a few women playwrights have succeeded in their endeavours to write and produce plays in India and have been acclaimed internationally as well. Dina Mehta, Manjula Padmanabhan, Poile Sengupta and Tripurari Sharma are some  of the names to mention who have been working tirelessly in the field of drama and have published many plays. Brides Are Not for Burning, Mangalam, Harvest and The Gift are few plays to mention that have been instrumental in setting a new trend of women’s theatre in India. Apart from these plays, there is not much talk and encouragement for creative drama especially the Indian women dramatists. Their contribution is yet to be recognized. If not encouraged like the other women playwrights in the western world, the Indian women dramatists still have miles to go before they get due recognition in Indian English drama.
The new trend that leads Indian English drama is undoubtedly plays of women, by women for everyone. Women’s theatre has emerged as a distinct dramatic force which stages the various issues of contemporary Indian society. As excluded mostly in the representation of women on stage directly or indirectly, the women playwrights in India have consciously or unconsciously focused on their appearance on stage breaking all the myths and barriers they have boldly taken steps to represent themselves. They do not have to be dependent on the male playwrights to be represented and act according to their choice anymore.
The themes of the plays written by women mostly deal with the issues related to women, at the same time they also depict children’s world and the issues related to men. The women playwrights are conscious of contemporary issues blended with troubling past memories, expectation of better and blissful future attempt to present balanced views on both society and family. Their multifarious themes can be compressed under four broad categories of plays. The Plays of Relationships include themes like motherhood, intricate baffling relationship of men and women, incest and adultery. The Plays of Violence focus on various types of violence as physical, emotional, psychological, and the exploitation of women at home and in profession. The Plays of Resistance present the themes of , voicing against rape, injustice and inequality, poverty illiteracy and gender discrimination. The Plays of Revolution suggests the themes of voice of the voiceless, political issues, religious and superstitious practices conservative values and traditional restrictions.
The Indian women playwrights considering drama a more serious tool of expression and representation have dealt with certain issues which the men playwrights have failed to do. They have adopted the genre as a more practical means to present serious familial, social cultural and political issues, the heinous crimes and practices of the society in satirical way. Their aim is to bring awareness of certain harsh realities, to protect every individual’s basic rights, to live freely, and to respect every individual irrespective of different gender caste or creed. The above mentioned four types of plays can be again compressed into one umbrella term as ‘The Plays of Change’ a new trend that perhaps goes hand in hand with the theatre of women.

 

 

Works Cited

Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 3rd ed. New Delhi: Macmillan India Ltd., 2003

Bandyopadhyay, Samik. Ed. Mahasweta Devi:Five Plays. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 1997

Kishore, Naveen. Body Blows: Women, Violence and Survival. Ed. Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2000

Marsh-Lockett, Carol P. Black Women Playwrights. Ed. New York: Rotledge, 1998

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