LOCATING THE SELF AND CONSTRUCTING THE IDENTITIES IN MAHESH DATTANI’S DANCE LIKE A MAN AND BRAVELY FOUGHT THE QUEEN (Pages 36-43) by Dr. Anshu Surve in THE ENGLISH RESEARCH EXPRESS / ISSN:2321-1164 (Online); 2347-2642 (Print)

Plays written in English in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in India can be seen as mere literary exercises and not real theatrical performances. English language theatre in India was basically exclusivist where the plays could not strike the cord with the audiences. It was only in the 1980s that Indian theatre in English emerged with a distinctive vigorous identity. Dattani in choosing to deal with themes relating to the intricacies of the modern/urban family, in presenting the protagonists in search of their identities within the domineering structures of orthodoxy, tradition, gender and sexuality penetrates below the surface and makes visible the invisible issues in his plays, thus homogenizing the audience with his plays and his plays with the tastes of audience. Mahesh Dattani is concerned with locating the self within various social, national, religious and familial contexts. He conceives identity not as a fixed or rigid or static concept, but as forever making and unmaking itself. Locating and constructing the self and the identity is enmeshed in stimulating social contexts, historical and cultural components in his plays. The paper first makes an attempt to present a brief historicity of the Indian theatre in the pre and the post independence era, and then explores the status of Indian English drama in the gamut of contemporary Indian theatre particularly in the decades of 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s and later. The third section locates the self and the identity in Mahesh Dattani’s plays. It also intends to probe what goes into the exposition, exploration and refashioning of the self and in constructing the identities in the plays: ‘Dance Like a Man’ and ‘Bravely Fought the Queen’.