of all reconstructed as language; to be understood as theatre, that is. This also implies that the focal emphasis would be contradictions, and not the psychic aberrations of an individual. It is not surprising that in Prasanna^s Tughlaq, there is an important shift of emphasis from the lofty Tughlaq to the lumpen Aziz. He and his conscience-ridden lieutenant are not insignificantly employed to fix the curtain here as a prop and to draw it there as a drop. Aziz seems to realize, as do the audiences, that there is as much action in front of the curtain as there is behind it - theatrically and therefore politically. As'such they know that thehystoria that Tughlaq the individual is trying to project is exploded by the element of parody - by the curtain, by the dislocated emphasis, by theatre in short. The struggle of tendencies is thus beginning to be understood. The last sequence of Prasanna's Tughlaq succinctly sums up the nature of its 'break5. Unlike the Alkazian Tughlaq perched atop a flight of steps in contemptuous resignation, the Tughlaq in this production actually goes off to sleep in front of the curtail? beside Barni, the historian and also, not insignificantly, in front of the audiences. The historian quietly gets up and covers his body with an ordinary bed-sheet. That indeed is the only funereal concession that rhetoric receives from Prasanna. 84 January - March 1983