Sunil Kuruvilla is a Canadian playwright from Waterloo, Ontario. [1] He is most noted for his play Rice Boy, which was a shortlisted finalist for the Governor General's Award for English-language drama at the 2003 Governor General's Awards. [2]
Educated at Wilfrid Laurier University, the University of Windsor and Yale University, [3] he first emerged as a playwright in the early 1990s when he won a Shaw Festival competition with his play Fight of the Century. [3] His plays Bulldogs and Firetrucks (1994) [4] and Ears to Glass, Glass to Ground (1996) [5] were both selected for the prestigious Vancouver New Play Festival.
Rice Boy was first staged by the Yale Repertory Theatre in 2000 while Kuruvilla was a student there, [6] and received a production in Los Angeles by The Actors' Gang in 2001. [7] In 2001, his play Fighting Words was staged by Toronto's Factory Theatre, [8] and his play Minus 1 was staged at the Toronto Fringe Festival. [9] In 2002, his play Snapshot was staged in Louisville, Kentucky. [1]
Rice Boy was produced by Canadian Stage in 2003, [10] and was a Governor General's Award nominee that year following its publication by Playwrights Canada Press.
In 2009, Rice Boy was staged by the Stratford Festival, the festival's first-ever production of a play about the immigrant experience. [11] At that time, Kuruvilla was named one of Wilfrid Laurier University's . [12] top 100 graduates in the university's 100 year history. Since then, he has become a television writer and college professor.