"This selection of six contemporary plays explores a wide range of issues - familial, social, mythological, political - with women centre stage. The plays are distinct from each other in structure, theme and style, and yet are bound together by a common thread - the position and role of women in family, social and political systems. The issues range from sexual abuse in Mangalam to in-law relationships in Inner Laws and the struggle for women's empowerment in Alipha, from love and passion in Keats Was a Tuber and desire and revenge in Thus Spake Shoorpanakha, So Said Shakuni, to dynastic politics in Samara's Song." "The plays highlight the manipulation of the English language in a manner appropriate to Indian characters. In Mangalam and in Samara's Song, the text explores the use of English with an 'Indian' syntax. Alipha shifts the teaching of the alphabet, an Indian alphabet, from a world of innocence to that of gender conflict. Poetry, both original in Mangalam and from English poets in Keats Was a Tuber, finds place in the plays alongside dramatic dialogue. The comic use of Hindi by a teacher of English in Inner Laws is one of the early uses of multilingualism in Indian plays in English." "The plays are eminently stage-worthy and will be of interest to scholars and students of literature, practitioners of drama and the general reader." --Book Jacket.