Naatak's Mr. India

NAATAK – Bay Area Indian Theatre

Naatak's grand political satire, MR. INDIA, opens in Palo Alto
Based on Sujit Saraf's novel The Peacock Throne; a 4-week, 13-show run

San Jose, Calif., September 6, 2016 – Naatak (www.naatak.com), America's biggest Indian theater company and winner of two consecutive "Best Live Theatre in Silicon Valley" awards in 2015 and 2016, presents its 54th production, MR. INDIA.

Written and Directed by Naatak co-founder Sujit Saraf, this grand musical fuses Indian history and politics, classical music and dance. A half-blind, bumbling tea-seller in Delhi rises to become Prime Minister of India in this hilarious and hard-hitting satire on Indian democracy. Based on the playwright's 2007 novel The Peacock Throne, acclaimed by Time magazine and The Guardian, the play starts with the 1984 anti-Sikh riots that followed the assassination of Indira Gandhi, and ends with the election that threw up a hung parliament in 1989. Tucked amidst these momentous events is the tale of a humble and foolish tea-seller, whose rise to power is the bittersweet story of India itself. The play features spectacular sets, costumes and lights, along with live music by Nachiketa Yakkundi and his team, and dance by Niharika Mohanty, Deepa Mahadevan, Madhuri Kishore and their team.

The whole play rhymes, and is presented in Hindi with supertitles in English. To make the play accessible beyond its South Asian audience, NAATAK uses super-titling technology to project dialogue in English on a screen above the stage.

The play begins on October 31, 1984, with news of the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by two of her bodyguards, both Sikhs, in retaliation for her campaign against Sikh extremists. The assassination sets off widespread rioting in India, in which hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of Sikhs are killed. A Sikh man in Delhi finds refuge in the tea stall of a foolish, half-blind tea seller. He survives, but inadvertently leaves half a million rupees in the stall. This sets off a chain of events that leads to the elevation of the tea-seller to the position of Prime Minster five years later.

The setting for the play is Chandni Chowk, the fabled market in Delhi that was once the seat of the Mughal Empire – it was here that the Mughal Emperor sat on the Peacock Throne (hence the name of the novel).

Mr India is Naatak's 54th production and is the winner of a Knight Foundation award. It will be the largest production ever staged by Naatak. It will be performed 13 times over 4 weeks from September 10th to October 2nd in Cubberley Theatre, Palo Alto. For more information about the play or about Naatak, email info@naatak.com.

ABOUT NAATAK:
Naatak, is a theater company in the San Francisco bay area, dedicated to producing intelligent and entertaining plays. Started in 1995 by students at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University, Naatak is now the most prominent and biggest Indian theater company in the United States, having performed continuously over 21 years. In those two decades, its plays have been watched by tens of thousands. Its members – more than 750 over two decades – are drawn primarily from the Tech industry in Silicon Valley. Naatak has been declared Best Live Theatre in Silicon Valley by the San Jose Mercury News for two years in a row in 2015 and 2016. Naatak is a 501(c)(3) registered non-profit organization.