Mahesh Elkunchwar's Plays: A Study

A playwright needs a living theatre to stage his plays, evaluate their total effect on the audience, and thereby get a chance to improve his performance. Plays, written in regional languages, dominate the Indian theatre as they are easily intelligible to the audience. These plays give a vent to the actors to develop histrionic talents in a natural and uninhibited way. Mahesh Elkunchwar gives vent to an aggressively modernist disquiet of the norm-ridden codes of sexuality and other such areas of interpersonal relations through his plays like Garbo, Vasakand, Raktapushp and Rudravarsha. G.P. Deshpande in his path breaking Udhvasta Dharmashala is engaged with a disturbingly critical analysis of the left politics from inside, and the play went on firmly to establish the tradition of political plays in Marathi. Party is a play of the pseudo-intellectuals who believe that they are the cream of the society. But when the realization dawns upon them they discover their hollow men, they try to conceal it, and in the process they deceive themselves. The play usually involves some kind of message about human experience.