A play by
Vijay Padaki
Duration - 110 Minutes
No of characters - 9
Short Synopsis
In the early ‘nineties India opened up its economy and joined the world economic order as a player and thus became a participant in the globalization of trade. That meant conforming to global practices in Intellectual ...Read Full Synopsis
A play By Vijay Padaki
Synopsis
In the early ‘nineties India opened up its economy and joined the world economic order as a player and thus became a participant in the globalization of trade. That meant conforming to global practices in Intellectual Property Rights. It also meant joining the World Trade Organization. Arthur Dunkel was the Director-General of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade between 1980 and 1993. He compiled an international agreement about the scope of intellectual property rights and its procedures. It came to be called the “Dunkel Draft”. The Draft was accepted and became the foundation of the World Trade Organization. The early ‘nineties saw a great deal of debate on several issues arising from the Dunkel Draft. An important one was the ethical-legal question of patenting life forms. In other words: who does life belong to? The play Credit Titles came out of a conversation around the Dunkel Draft. The conversation was part serious and part light-hearted. It was clear that a lot of the heated debate was driven by anger at having a rule book thrust on a nation. Most people had not actually read the Dunkel Draft. (Why does that sound familiar?) We saw that that since ‘dunkel’ in German meant ‘darkness’, it might well be that the poor countries in the world were dealing with a ‘darkness draft’. They did not know what they were getting into and were perhaps being prevented from knowing what they were getting into! A friend in Chennai wrote and suggested that I should submit it to The Hindu, who had just then announced the (first) awards for contemporary play scripts. The friend even offered to submit the play script on my behalf. Months later, when all was forgotten, I received a phone call informing me that Credit Titles had won the award. The extraordinarily talented dramatist Pearl Padamsee was chairperson of the award jury. Later, in a meeting in Mumbai, she congratulated me for turning out a play that was ahead of its time in form and construction.
Duration
110 Minutes
No of characters
9