Muggy Night in Mumbai

On a Muggy Night in Mumbai
Mahesh Dattani
Friday-Saturday, June 14-15; 8pm
Location: Jon Sims Center for the Arts, 1519 Mission @ 11th St

On a Muggy Night in Mumbai is the first play in Indian theater to handle openly gay themes of love, partnership, trust and betrayal. This workshop production is also a play about society’s expectations of behavior and how individuals fall victim to those expectations. This performance and the panel are co-produced by the Jon Sims Center for the Arts in Association with the Harvey Milk Institute, the Queer Cultural Center, the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center and Asian American Theater Company. Directed by Vidhu Singh of Asian American Theater Company.

Mahesh Dattani is India’s first playwright in English to be awarded the Sahitya Akademi award for his contribution to world drama. His plays deal with religious tension, sexuality and gender issues. What one loves about them is the way he brings in the dynamics of personal and moral choices while focusing on human relationships. He has been described as “one of India’s best and most serious contemporary playwrights writing in English” by Alexandra Viets in the International Herald Tribune.

‘Mr. Dattani is a canny and facile writer, and there is nothing (in his writing) that is alien to American audiences. Powerful and disturbing.’ Stephen Bruckner, The New York Times. ‘Since Salman Rushdie swung open the door to the West, English language Indian novelists have wowed the world. Indian playwrights have been less conspicuous except for Mahesh Dattani’ – Vibhuti Patel, Newsweek International.