This is my last play.  I wrote it when I was living in Pretoria and had no hope of ever being involved in theatre again.  I wrote it sometime in the early 1990's.  I don't remember exactly when.

It has never been performed but, as may be gathered from the copy of the leaflet above, it was published in an anthology entitled Black South African Women: an Anthology of Plays compiled by Dr Kathy Perkins of the University of Illinois. 

Unfortunately, I had never edited the play.  I have now revised and edited the play for this collection.  Paula Richman, Professor of South Asian Religions, Oberlin College, made insightful observations that helped me improve the structure of the play.

I was inspired to write Flight from the Mahabharath after watching the serialised version of the Mahabharata on television.  The form of my play was inspired by my love of Brecht's Epic Theatre and Commedia dell' Arte and my admiration for Mary Daly.

The play looks at the Mahabharata from a woman's point of view and the Epic becomes a metaphor for the patriarchal society in which women function mainly as adjuncts. The women fly from the Epic into a different genre, Drama.  Their new home is the stage (as opposed to a book).  On stage, they are involved in the process of giving form to their new reality, that is, the play.   Two men, also wishing to escape the social conditioning that denies them their identities, join the women in creating the play.

CHARACTERS

Women:             Draupadi,

                        Radha

                        Subhadra,

                        Kunthi,

                        Hidimba,

                        Urvasi

                        Uttarai

                        Ghandari

                        Other women

Men:                Brihannala

                        Sikandi

SETTING      

The stage.

PROPS are mimed