Tanika Gupta: Historical Plays
Four ground-breaking plays that explore the complex relationship between England and India over more than a century, weaving together personal and political narratives.
The Waiting Room: Priya Banerjee is dead, but her life is far from over. She has just three days left to roam the earth before she can go on to the ‘Waiting Room’ of spirits. As she reluctantly watches and listens to her family, Priya is guided by a droll and increasingly impatient immortal soul in the guise of her Bollywood idol, Dilip Kumar.
Great Expectations: Relocating Pip’s extraordinary journey to nineteenth-century India, this coming-of-age story, evoking some of Dickens’ most colourful characters, is faithful to the period of the book and the richness of Dickens’ language – a vivid theatrical retelling of a universally loved masterpiece.
The Empress: It is the Jubilee! Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, 1887. At Tilbury Docks, Rani and Abdul step ashore after the long voyage from India. One has to battle a society who deems her a second-class citizen, the other forges an astonishing entanglement with the ageing Queen who finds herself enchanted by stories of an India she rules but has never seen.
Lions and Tigers: Based on the true story of Tanika Gupta’s great uncle and freedom fighter Dinesh Gupta, the play charts the Dinesh’s emotional and political awakening as this extraordinary 19-year-old pits himself against the British Raj. Winner of the James Tait Black Award in 2018.
Tanika Gupta has written for theatre, radio, film and television. She is an Honorary Fellow at Rose Bruford College, was awarded an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List in 2008 for Services to Drama, and was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2016.