Damini the Damager and Other Plays

Clockwise from centre: Maitri Gopalkrishna, Nandini Rao, Sukhita Aiyer, Rajyashree Dutt, Nandita Abreo and Amitha Madhan. The cast of Damini the Damager at Alliance Francaise
de Bangalore, July 2005. Photo by Gautam Raja

Published in March 2006 by Unisun Publications.

Indian playwright Mahesh Dattani says in the foreword, "At the heart of it, [Gautam Raja's] stories, like all good stories, are a metaphor for many social realities that are distinctly Indian, and hence reflect the truth about the human condition that is timeless and universal."

The volume contains the plays Shards, Pub Crawl and Damini the Damager.

Shards
A collection of short, sharp pieces, Shards has been performed several times in Bangalore, as well as at the Questors Theatre in London. It contains the following pieces:

Apartment (2F; <10 mins)
Two women have tea on a balcony. People have fallen past - who are they? Where are they going?

Deep Freeze (1F, 1M; 10 mins)
This household's "brand new toy", a deep freeze, changes the way it lives and eats.

God (1F, 1M; <10 mins)
When a wife dreams about sleeping next to God, her husband works himself up into a jealous lather.

Two Sips (1F, 1M; <10 mins)
She is always "two sips short" at the end of her coffee. And also, at the end of her relationship.

Pub Crawl
A two-hander for one male and one female, Pub Crawl has been hugely successful in Bangalore. It runs 50 minutes and is a series of intercut monologues with some dialogue. Though it hits hard in places, it is outright comedy and works in noiser spaces. Some of its most successful shows have been at pubs.

See what the press has said:

'Pub Crawl---one of the most staged plays in recent Beantown Theatre history ... lays bare the sub-culture of the pub-culture of Bangalore ... irreverent but never irrelevant.'
- Ramjee Chandran, The Bangalore Monthly

'...brilliant, satirical...'
- Shefali Srinivas, Asian Age

'This comedy/satire is so well put together ... anybody with an iota of self-awareness will go back to an uncomfortable period of 'quiet time' and retrospective introspection.'
- Chippy Ganjee, Indian Express

Damini the Damager
This loosely connected set of monologues has had a series of successful stagings at various spaces in Bangalore. It runs 50 minutes and is for four female actors. The stories are funny but also contain darker explorations of sexual and gender politics.

Skin Deep
Miss World wants to butcher her face. It's not hers any more, she doesn't want it.

Hurricane Shoba
Sita tells the hiliarious story of her explosive relationship with her overbearing mother.

Ten Ton Tongue
Every time he dropped Sapna home, he leaned over and kissed her. Now he wants to do more...

The Stone Sentinel
Hurricane Shoba's birthday is coming. She loves gifts. She hates their gifts.

Wedlock
Sapna gets married. To someone else. He has a burning desire. He lights a match.

Damini the Damager
Sita wants to make a movie. She tells us the opening scene. It's a killer.