In its new avatar, the play, titled Dance Me to the End of Love, will waltz you across Shankar's quirky café, before beaming you through cyber space and book readings with Dattani's work. "It all started with Avantika, who had written a series of plays on young and old people dating. Two of these stories, The Date and the Dated, were extremely delightful and had previously been staged together. I thought why not take these two works, and weave it along with another short story about a Facebook romance between two men, which I had written for the Indian Quarterly around five years ago," says Dattani.

Dattani says that since his "cyber romance didn't spatially fit into Shankar's plot that opens in a café", he had to stylise it differently. "The romance here is between two older people and so it's still very traditional. I have not made many changes to the original, except added a reference to Snapchat, may be," adds the Sahitya Akademi award winner.

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What Dattani finds interesting about cyber love is that the "starting point is not the body, but words". "It's probably not love at first sight, it's more like love at first mail or chat," he ends. The two writers
will also engage with the audience in an hour-long interaction before the play.

WHEN: 6.30 pm onwards
WHERE: Harkat Studios, Bungalow, 75, JP Road, Versova, Andheri West
ENTRY: Rs 350
TO BOOK: in.bookmyshow.com

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