“Is God a Taoist” is a dialogue between ‘a God’ and ‘a Mortal’. It is a series of ideas that treats a wide variety of subjects about life in general. A healthy discussion to shake our preconceived ideas about God and almost all other things or aspects or ideas that follow. The dialogue is from a book ‘The Tao is Silent’ n which Smullyan’s introduces the eastern philosophy to westerners. Smullyan sees the Taoist as "one who is not so much in search of something he hasn't, but who is enjoying what he has."

About the Author: Raymond Merrill Smullyan is an American mathematician, concert pianist, logician, Taoist philosopher, and magician. His first career was stage magic.

He was a professor of philosophy at Lehman College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and at Indiana University. He is also an amateur astronomer, using a six inch reflecting telescope for which he ground the mirror.

Smullyan has written several books about Taoist philosophy, which he believes neatly solves most or all traditional philosophical problems as well as integrating mathematics, logic, and philosophy into a cohesive whole. He is the author of many books on recreational mathematics and recreational logic. Most notably, one is titled ‘What Is the Name of This Book?’

About the Director: Vidyanidhee Vanarase, also know as Prasad, was born and brought up in Pune. He completed his post graduation from the National School of Drama (NSD), New Delhi. He has directed more than fifty plays in Marathi, Hindi, Braj-Bundeli, Kannada and English. He has gained proficiency in various interrelated areas - Direction, Teaching and Mentoring, Administration and Management of arts and Applied Arts.

He is associated with several theatre organizations of international repute for more than a decade. He has worked with Prithvi International Theatre Festival, India, London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT), UK, Project Phakama, South Africa to name a few. He has been involved in theatre training for more than 20 years and has worked as visiting faculty / guest director at several universities and theatre institutes in India and abroad. His plays have been performed in various parts of India in regional and national theatre festivals.

His plays have also traveled internationally to UK, Europe and Asia. He is a Founder Director of IAPAR (International Association for Performing Arts and Research). IAPAR in the only Indian Member Institution of ITI/UNESCO-UNITWIN Network for Higher Education in Performing Arts and he is on the Board of this network.

He is Secretary General of the Indian National Centre of International Theatre Institute - UNESCO.

Director’s Note: "Directing ‘Is God A Taoist’ has been a very long journey. It all started almost fifteen years ago! A friend came up with this ‘dialogue’ as an interesting read. We read it. It was intriguing. But probably was not performable! So it was left at that point. And it has been haunting me since then.

Eventually I went back to it when Prof. Y S P Thorat asked me to do a dramatic reading of this text for his students of Philosophy. And we did that together. Soon, I was jointly teaching a course titled ‘Psychology of Improvisations’ along with Prof. Suparna Karpe. We took this dialogue as a starting point. It took us on a very beautiful journey. The kind of improvisational work students came up with was absolutely inspiring. And since then it has stayed with me.

Last month, I got a call from Vijaykumar Naik asking me if I would do a play with his group. I said yes instantaneously. I had no idea about which play I would like to do. We worked together in a workshop. And in one of our conversations, some members of the group mentioned that they would like to do something that they have never tried. And for some reason, this play flashed in my head. A play that talks about Philosophy, which does not follow the typical structure of a well made play, which has two characters but a possibility of multiple actors, and to top it all, it’s in English language. It was enough to try out for the first time…

I am not going to write much about the play itself. It is better that you see it and respond to it the way you wish. Let me not make it prescriptive. After all, it is about free will…! Or not…!"

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