Inspired by Kalidasa’s classical play, the transliterated title of which requires fancy diacritical marks, King Duhshanta is childless in spite of his many wives. He falls in love with Shakuntala, seduces her, and promises to make her a queen in his court.Unfortunately, a curse intervenes, and when she arrives pregnant at court, Duhshanta has forgotten her. The earth swallows her up. Duhshanta serendipitously remembers her, laments his error, and cancels Spring. After some wandering, he finds her, meets his son, and they live happily ever after.Kalidasa's play is a story of universal themes: love, betrayal, pride, repentance, and amnesia. In the play, which, for obvious reasons, is a translation, a young woman is seduced by a king. But this is no ordinary translation, and no ordinary seduction. The two really are in love. Their alliance is, indeed, an honorable marriage, much, we may say, like the marriage of Aeneas and Dido, or like David and Bathsheba. A child is conceived. A promise made. A ring given. An elephant goes mad. These common experiences are here woven together in a narrative weft of singular quality, richness, texture, intimacy, and sensation. Indeed, we may call this play a tapestry. A tapestry of tastes.Devi Dhvanme Sen gives Kalidasa a prepostmodern facelift in this meta-classic adaptation. You'll never read Kalidasa the same way again, if, indeed, you ever had the idea to read Kalidasa again. Or ever.This Is Shakuntala was first produced on the stage by the Bluebeard Acting Company in association with the Earnest Repertory Company at the Maxine Beckman Theatre in Spanish Fork, Utah, as part of the New West Centripetal Festival, designed as an alternative for discerning theatre-goers to the proliferation of fringe festivals, not only in the American West, but as remote as Minnesota. As many parts as This Is Shakuntala has, the cast included not only Lazarus Filament in the role of Duhshanta and Devi Dhvanme Sen as Shakuntala, but C. Moss Evans, Kelly Herbiks, Ranuél Khoteimi, Scott Petersen, and several others of Utah’s finest actors, but also the entire student body of Ms. Paxton’s third grade class at Orem Elementary, with the exception of Eddie Porter, who just would not shut up about his rabbit. The production was directed by Obie-winner Merrill T. Blight and was designed by Telip Karfunkner.This Is Shakuntala won the prestigious Palakis International Prize in 2003, which included an unstaged reading of the play at Jospes Centre in Athens, Greece. In 2006, This Is Shakuntala was banned by the Chinese government, though it was removed from the official list of banned plays in 2007 under the condition that the eighteenth page of the first printed edition be replaced with the text of page eight of the 1951 edition of The Rose Tattoo.