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Listen to this politician's dirty talk

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Working Title's new play, which premiers tonight, and gives dirty talk a whole new meaning. Don't walk in expecting moans, gasps and seductive schmoozing. Think on the lines of politics and censorship

Dirty Talk would have well been a part of an international project but it was beset with the basic, desi problemsu00a0an actor had fallen ill five days before the premiere, which meant the playwright-director Nayantara Roy had to don the cap of actor, as well.

Nayantara simply shrugged at her predicament and got on with learning the lines she had written.

The play is a result of an international collaboration, Contacting the World, organised by UK-based group Contact Theatre.
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After months of back and forth with theatre groups and trainers from several countries, Working Title had to come up with an original script.
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"When I began working on the play, Britain was looking at its first coalition government.

Conversely, India has been working with coalition governments for years now," says the 25 year-old director. The political situation acted as a trigger point for the play.

The protagonist of Nayantara's play is an England-based Indian scientist, who creates an invention that makes him popular worldwide.

The scientist develops political aspirations and returns to his homeland (India) to contest elections. But his detractors dub him a firang (reminds you of a decade-old political controversy, doesn't it?) and support a local strongman instead.
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"The scientist is, however, hugely popular with the common man. It soon emerges as a battle between the local strongman and the new entrant," says Nayantara.

Dirty Talk also concentrates on censorship and brings up questions like: Does art have a place in a society that focuses intensely on black or white, good or bad?
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This is the second play, within a year that brings censorship to the fore (Sunil Shanbag's S*x. M*rality and Cens*rship was the first).
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Nayantara says the two plays deal with the subject differently. "The two plays are similar in that our roots are in censorship and that we use music to convey the message.
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But Dirty Talk is born out of a different process so it's bound to be distinct," she reasons.