A volatile triptych of historical rupture, revolution, and ideological conflict.

In these plays, Utpal Dutt transforms the stage into an arena of intense political friction, where human intimacy and conscience are subjected to the brutal machinery of class and empire. Moving across three eras of systemic upheaval, these plays dissect the exact mechanics of revolt.                                            

Hunting the Sun returns to pre-Mughal India, mapping the emergence of Buddhism as an insurgent intellectual force fracturing an entrenched ruling order. The Great Rebellion plunges into the 1857 First Indian War of Independence, stripping away romantic nationalism to expose a complex, volatile theater of anti-colonial resistance.

In Nightmare City, the battlefield shifts to 1970s Calcutta—a metropolis suffocating under state surveillance, counterinsurgency, and subterranean revolutionary fervor. Refusing simple moral binaries, Dutt’s theater tests ideological convictions through spectacle, betrayal, and human contradiction. Fiercely unsentimental and uncompromising in its vision, this collection treats history not as a static pageant, but as an active, explosive site of contemporary conflict.