Three Plays: The Hindu MetroPlus award winners, 2008-2010

A stunning array of voices guaranteed to make you think feel dream The MetroPlus Playwright Award was instituted in 2008 by The Hindu for the best original unpublished and unperformed English script. Harlesden High Street by Abhishek Majumdar the 2008 winner is an evocative complex play about displacement and optimism. Through its motley characters and shifts of time and space this play captures the limited world of immigrants their frustrations and their dilemmas. The Skeleton Woman by Prashant Prakash and Kalki Koechlin the 2009 winners is a love story about two people who defeat fantastical odds to be together. Swinging between reality and make-believe it weaves together an Inuit folk tale and a modern-day story about a young fisherman-turned-writer with a potent imagination and his long-suffering wife. Taramandal by Neel Chaudhuri the winner for 2010 borrows the protagonist from Satyajit Ray?s short story ?Patol Babu Filmstar?. Chaudhuri uses a host of characters to masterfully construct a parallel narrative that mirrors Patol?s journey to disillusionment. Three Plays questions definitions and pushes boundaries. It is a powerful reminder of who and where we are on the cultural map.