The Mahabharata at Paramount Center

The Mahabharata, one of the grandest epic poems ever written, receives modern-day fanfare thanks to iconic storyteller, Jean-Claude Carrière. The Academy Award-winning screenwriter (The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Diary of a Chambermaid) delivers this ancient Indian myth about power struggles between gods and men. 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. This pared-down, magical 90-minute retelling is based on Carrière's prior collaboration with Tony Award-winning director Peter Brook which resulted in an acclaimed 9-hour theatrical event, as well as a 5-hour film version.