The Mahabharata

Jean-Claude Carrière, one of the greatest storytellers of our time, delivers one of grandest epics ever written: The Mahabharata.

Accompanied by a musician and a dancer, Carrière adopts the role of a traveling bard to tell the story to a new generation of listeners, reprising the style in which it would have been performed in ancient India as an oral epic. Set in an ancient, mythic time, the narrative centers on the war for power between two families: the Pandava, five children of the gods, and the Kaurava, the hundred sons of a king whose legitimacy is in question. This pared-down, magical 90-minute retelling of the classic tale is based on Carrière’s prior collaboration on The Mahabharata with iconic director Peter Brook which resulted in an acclaimed 9-hour theatrical event as well as a 5-hour film version. Bringing decades of knowledge from working with the text and tracing its roots in India, Carrière provides a deeply personal and unique interpretation of this large epic.