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wear masks; and, according to the directions at the start of the play, the director "should seek to 'type' them and avoid individuality." At one point the eight Indians in the play (again, not including the bearer), do "a circular sleepwalk" around the four Americans (p. 92); here, and elsewhere, cliches are effectively used -- effectively, due in a large part to the ritual style of the play. The brevity, thirteen pages, helps make the ritualization effective and prevents tedium. The play is humorous, but at the same time uncomfortable -- I'm sure to Indians as well as to Americans.
Two others, Natini^ subtitled A Comedy in Three Acts, and Song of Deprivation^ subtitled A Comic Morality in One Act for the Non-existent Underground Theatre in India, have the characters admit at the end of the play that they are, indeed, in a play. This is done somewhat more effectively in NaHni. The two male characters are trying to decide which Nalini -- the girl of their sexual fantasies, an object, or the actual person, who refuses to be objectified -- is realo They call for the front bell to ring, which is to signal Nalini's entrance^ It does not ring, then, finally, "a violent ring fills the auditorium and resounds in it" (po 52), Wondering who did it, one character tells the other that "it couldn't be the stage manager., He's a gentleman." The other replies that "it couldn't be the author, either. He's a gentleman toOo" One declares, "That was no ordinary bell, more like some natural force." The other replies, "Some historical force." They continue their roles, having another drink and discussing whether to go to the movies; yet, they maintain their recognition of their theatrical position, yelling out orders to whoever is offstage controlling the electricity,. Of course exactly the opposite of what they request is done.
In Song of Deprivation^ which involves a phone conversation between the only two characters, two ultra-mod, sexually-oriented lovers, "He" and "She," the characters finally recognize and acknowledge the presence of the audience, hide from them behind screens, and remove the only stage prop -- another screen -- which separates them. They continually tell the audience to go away, obviously for reasons of privacy. It is probably meant to be for reasons of effect as well, but one would have to see the play to determine whether or not it is an effective device; on paper it does not seem so (Dubey found the play "provocative enough to irritate me but nothing more.")
In both plays the admission of the play as a play, suspending reality as it were, strikes one as more of a recognition on the part of the characters than a conscious, or at least effective, theatrical approach. Certainly it is not Brechtian, wherein the audience from the beginning is made aware, and continually reminded, that the play is just that -- a play. It could also be contrasted to other Indian plays in which the audience is alerted at the start of the style of approach to be used: e^go, Indira Parthasarathi's Layers of Blankets (translated from the Tamil; Enact^ January-February 1972), where one of the characters comes out of the audience at the beginning; C. T. Khanolkar's Bajirao the Cipher (translated from the Marathi; Enact, August-September 1971), which commences with a conversation among the director, actors, and the playwright; and, Girish Karnad's Hayavadana (translated from the Kannada; Enact^ June 1971), which employs a Sanskrit-type beginning, with an invocation followed