'below'. He emerges and vanishes as a revenant; all the while the non-tactile: is rendered real on the props of costumes, set designing, lighting and sound effects, classical blockings and above all, the location of the theatric action amongst real historic monuments that seem to accelerate the process of naturalizing to such a degree that the theatric space, already endangered by the open air, is most effectively dissolved. This then was the challenge that Prasanna faced when he took up Tughlaq. Almost the first thing Prasanna does is to take Tughlaq indoors. It is not that he is playing a simple game of indoorizing. His primary concern seems to be to reclaim the theatric space that the naturalizers of hystoria seem to have lost through an unending string of Tughlaqs. Tughlaq no longer stands on the real though dilapidated ramparts of Purana Qila; he now stands behind a collapsible curtain which is firmly grounded in the history of theatre. No simple transference this, from the natural-real to the theatric, for it implies a comparable mastery of the tools and craft. And these in turn have a demystifying function making the production a significant constituent in the historic 'break'I have already spoken about. The use of the curtain in the reorganization "of the theatric space, in denuding hystoria of its implicit and naturalized stand against history is original.The curtain is used here not neutrally (to perpetuate convention) but to secure for theatre its autonomy. 'This helps in the dissolution of the 'motif of emergence' which in turn helps todeconstruct, through an accompanying element of parody, the textual rhetoric. Thus there are no invincible flights of steps, no other-worldly metaphysics -only a curtain that merely divides the space or, even when it becomes a prop, remains a curtain in the last instance. He constantly contradicts its use as a backdrop and steps on to the other side of the imaginary line. Thus while Tughlaq is fulminating from the 'sky-rocketing' ramparts of his Daulatabad fort, gone is the grandeur oftheAlkazian hystoria. Instead, a bitter realization of his collision with history (a contradiction in which he does not have even an outside chance ofsucceed-ing - a fact that Alkazi's production mystified) is brought to the fore. Indeed so painful has been this process of de-rhetoricization that an actor like Manohar Singh seemed ill at ease in Tughlaq's role. For, in order to bring parody into play, one has first of all to put the traditional rhetoric (inside the text as also inside the production)'attached with Tughlaq under erasure. This means that the play would have to be first Journal of Arts and Ideas 83 REVIEWS