What if dramatist Asif Currimbhoy were writing today?: Dissent and forgetting in a theatre of crisis

The presence of Asif Currimbhoy is common in Indian English departments. Currimbhoy, as a playwright, is often considered to be the first authentic voice in theatre as his plays were meant for the physical theatre’s rigorous labour. His predecessors then like TP Kailasam, Mohit Chattopadhyay, and Sri Aurobindo, wrote plays that were lyrical and symbolic. This further aided his status as the foremost Indian English Playwright who achieved the right balance between the personal and political with drama. The unpopularity of his works now compared to a Girish Karnad or a Mahesh Dattani could be his privilege of an American education in the 1960s, when subcultures were gaining more traction and the related existential and absurd struggles reflected in Currimbhoy’s plays.

When Vijay Tendulkar, Safdar Hashmi, and Badal Sircar turned to the openness and perils of street theatre, Currimbhoy experimented with the frailties of the modern human condition with a fearless appetite. His plays are often cited as too blasphemous for the times in which they were written (and even today). They continue to offer a wide range of perspectives on the perils of passion and desire, modern existential highs and lows, escapisms of religion and spirituality, colonial and postcolonial trauma of...

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