Broken Images
Monologue, image and the language debate
Discuss bilingual writing.
The title echoes T. S. Eliot's 'heap of broken images': a self split into a public part and a private part.
The image on the screen turns what would be a monologue (one person speaking) into a dialogue, so that Manjula is questioned by her own other self.
On camera she is gracious and confident; off camera she gloats, then grows defensive and angry.
The play satirises language politics, envy of the money English writers earn, and the world of celebrity media.
It asks two serious questions: can a writer truly work in two languages? And does writing in another tongue betray the mother tongue? Two languages, two selves.
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