On Wednesday, October 28th, at 6:30 p.m., On the Verge will present a staged reading of Hayavadana, which was written in 1971 by Girish Karnad, India's foremost living playwright as well as an acclaimed actor and film director. On Wednesday, October 28th, at 6:30 p.m., On the Verge will present a staged reading of Hayavadana, which was written in 1971 by Girish Karnad, India's foremost living playwright as well as an acclaimed actor and film director.
The staged reading is scheduled to coincide with Karnad's visit to Ithaca College. It will feature a cast of Ithaca College students and faculty members (including Greg Bostwick and Kathleen Mulligan, from the Department of Theatre Arts), and it will be directed by Claire Gleitman, a professor in the English department.
Hayavadana derives from a 12th-century story from the Sanskrit collection, the Kathasaritasagara, as well as from a novel written in 1940 by the German author Thomas Mann. The play concerns two young men who are rivals for a woman's love; one possesses an ideal body and the other possesses an ideal mind. From this scenario, Karnad constructs a play that raises vexing questions about where identity resides.
The play also brilliantly interlaces Western dramatic techniques and Indian folk traditions in a work that is exuberantly theatrical, richly philosophical, and daringly anti-patriarchal. By allowing her appetite to govern her behavior and by willfully denying that her husband's selfhood resides where he says it does, Karnad's central female character poses an unsettling challenge to traditional notions regarding female decorum and male patriarchal control.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20091022121421970