New Horizons: Vijay Tendulkar’s Contribution to Modern Theatre reveals how Vijay Tendulkar endeavours to develop theatre as an object of instruction or as a means of public communication at large rather than as a mere means of amusement and entertainment. It brings out how Tendulkar, like Shaw, Galsworthy and Barker, turns the audience into watchful observers, thereby enabling them to evaluate and judge.
The book presents Tendulkar as a rebel against the society, who wants to shock the sensibility of the conventional readers. The discussion of the plays such as Sakharam Binder, Ghashiram Kotwal and Kanyandaan depicts anguish, disillusionment, and predicament of the modern man, the kind we come across in the plays of John Osborne, Harold Pinter, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller. The dramatic genius of Tendulkar is characterized by unusual creativity, profound psychological insight, sharp, incisive sensibility, comprehensive vision and broad, cosmopolitan perspective. Witnessing his plays, enacted on the stage by various countrywide theatre groups, the audience has an exposure to the country’s national theatre and its rich and varied dramaturgical legacy and theatrical culture.
The book will be useful for the students and teachers, of English literature, particularly Indian English drama, and researchers in these fields. It will also help those concerned with theatre and stage production of dramas.
Shailaja B. Wadikar is Assistant Professor in English at the School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Swami Ramanand Teerth Marathwada University. She obtained her PGDTE from EFLU, Hyderabad and Ph.D. from S.R.T.M. University, Nanded. She has completed UGC, New Delhi’s major research project and her work has been published in a book form under the title New Trends in Literary Criticism: A Spectrum. She has presented over forty papers at various international, national, state-level conferences and seminars. Comparative Literature, Indian Writing in English, Literary Theory, Phonetics, and Linguistics are her areas of interest.