Tanika Gupta

Last updated

Tanika Gupta

MBE, FRSL
Born (1963-12-01) 1 December 1963 (age 60)
Chiswick, Hounslow, London, England
NationalityBritish
EducationModern history
Alma mater Oxford University
Occupation(s)Playwright, screenwriter
Years active1998–present
Known forTheatre, television
StyleDrama, radio drama, screenplay
Spouse
David Archer
​
(m. 1988)​
Children3
Relatives Dinesh Chandra Gupta
(maternal great uncle)
Website tanikagupta.com

Tanika Gupta MBE FRSL (born 1 December 1963) is a British playwright. Apart from her work for the theatre, she has also written scripts for television, film and radio plays.

Contents

Early life

Tanika Gupta was born in London to immigrant parents from Kolkata, India, [1] where her family had their origins. [2] As a child, Gupta performed Tagore dance dramas with her parents. Her mother Gairika Gupta was an Indian classically trained dancer, and her father Tapan Gupta was a singer. The Indian revolutionary Dinesh Gupta was her great uncle. [3]

After attending Copthall Comprehensive School in London and then Mill Hill School for her A levels, [4] Gupta graduated from Oxford University with a Modern History degree. After Oxford, her political commitment found expression in her work for an Asian women's refuge in Manchester. In 1988, she married David Archer an anti-poverty activist and ActionAid's current Head of Tax Justice and Public Services, whom she met at university. She and her husband then moved to London where Gupta was initially a community worker in Islington, writing in her spare time. [3]

Career

Over the past 25 years Tanika has written over 25 stage plays that have been produced in major theatres across the UK. She has also written 30 radio plays for the BBC and several original television dramas, as well as scripts for EastEnders, Grange Hill and The Bill. The Waiting Room (produced for the National Theatre in 2000) was an early career highpoint with Indian film star Shabana Azmi performing on the stage in London for the first time. [5] [6] [7]

Gupta's 2013 play The Empress, about Abdul Karim and Queen Victoria opened in Stratford upon Avon and is now on the GCSE curriculum along with her adaptation of Ibsen's A Doll's House, which was first performed at Hammersmith Lyric in 2018. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] Writing in The Daily Telegraph , Dominic Cavendish praised The Empress, saying: "This fascinating new theatre production has got 'make this into a movie' written all over it." [11]

Her play Lions and Tigers performed at the Sam Wannamaker in Shakespeare's Globe Theatre tells the remarkable story set in the 1930s of her great uncle, Dinesh Gupta, an Indian freedom fighter. Lions and Tigers is now published in Methuen's series of Modern Classics. [17] [18] [19] Praise for Lions and Tigers singled out the "intimate storytelling, where Gupta's writing is at its most playful and potent" for particular note. [19] Other notable plays include Sugar Mummies (Royal Court Theatre 2006); [7] Gladiator Games (Sheffield Crucible Theatre 2006); [20] [21] Hobson's Choice (Young Vic 2001 and Manchester Royal Exchange 2018). [22] [23] [24] [25] Her most recent productions are Mirror on the Moor (Royal Court Living Newspaper, April 2021), and The Overseas Student (Hammersmith Lyric, June 2021). [26] [27] [28] [29]

Personal life

Gupta and her husband have two daughters, Nandini (born 1991), Niharika (born 1993), and a son Malini (born 2000). [3]

Works

Theatre plays

YearTitle
1995Voices on the Wind (NT Studio)
1997Skeleton (Soho)
1997A River Sutra (NT Studio / 3 Mill Island)
1998On The Couch with Enoch (BAC)
2000The Waiting Room (National Theatre)
2002Sanctuary (National Theatre)
Inside Out (Arcola)
2003 Hobson's Choice (Young Vic)
Fragile Land (Hampstead)
2004The Country Wife (Watford)
2006Gladiator Games (Sheffield Crucible)
Catch (Royal Court)
Sugar Mummies (Royal Court)
2008Meet The Mukherjees (Bolton Octagon)
White Boy (Soho)
2010Great Expectations (Watford)
2012Wah Wah Girls (Saddlers Wells / Peacock Theatre)
2013Love'N'Stuff (Stratford East)
2013The Empress (RSC)
2015Anita and Me (Birmingham Rep)
2016A Midsummer Night's Dream (dramaturg at The Globe)
2017Lions and Tigers (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London)
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (Hull Truck)
2018Hobsons's Choice (Royal Exchange)
2019A Doll's House (Lyric Hammersmith, London)
Red Dust Road (National Theatre Scotland/Edinburgh International Festival)
Hobson's Choice (Manchester Royal Exchange)
Bones (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama)
2021Mirror on the Moor (Royal Court, London)
2021The Overseas Student (Lyric Hammersmith, London)

Radio plays

YearTitle
1991Asha (BBC Radio 4)
1994Badal and his Bike (BBC Radio 5)
Kiss Me Quick (BBC Radio 5)
1996Pankhiraj (BBC Radio 4)
1997Ananda Sananda (BBC Radio 4)
Kiss Me Quick (BBC Radio 5)
The Bounty Hunter (BBC Radio 4)
Skeleton (BBC Radio 4)
1998Voices On The Wind (BBC World Service)
Red Oleanders (BBC Radio 3)
Westway (BBC World Service)
1999Muse of Fusion (BBC Radio 4)
Coat (BBC Radio 4)
Waistland (BBC Radio 4)
The Queen's Retreat (BBC Radio 4)
2000The Eternal Bubble (BBC World Service)
The Secret (BBC Radio 4)
The Book of Secrets (BBC Radio 4)
2001Betrayal: The Trial of William Davidson (BBC)
Stowaway (BBC)
2002A Second Chance (BBC Radio 3)
2003The Parting (BBC Radio 4)
2004The God of Small Things (BBC Radio 4)
2005Chitra (BBC Radio 4)
2008Rudolpho's Zest (BBC Radio 3)
Silver Street (BBC Asian Network)
2010Rescue Me (BBC Radio 4)
2012A Doll's House (BBC Radio 3)
2013Pather Panchali (BBC Radio 4)
2014Baby Farming (BBC Radio 3)

Filmography

YearTitleNotesCredit
1995FlightTV filmWriter
BideshiShort
Siren Spirits1 episode: "Bideshi"
1999The FiancéeShort
2000 EastEnders 4 episodes: inc "17 January 2000"
1997–2000 Grange Hill 7 episodes: "20:19", "20:20", "21:15", "22.9", "22:10", "23:5", "23:6"
2001 Crossroads Unknown episodes
The Bill 1 episode: "Complicity (Part 2)"
2002The Lives of AnimalsTV filmScreenplay
2006 Banglatown Banquet
2010Non-ResidentShortWriter
2018PritilataMonologue as part of Snatches series, BBCWriter

Awards and recognition

In 2008, Gupta was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours for her services to drama. [3] [30] In June 2016 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2018, Gupta was awarded with the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Drama for her play Lions and Tigers. [31]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Barnes (playwright)</span> English playwright and screenwriter (1931–2004)

Peter Barnes was an English Olivier Award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His best known work is the play The Ruling Class, which was made into a 1972 film for which Peter O'Toole received an Oscar nomination.

Amanda Root is an English actress. She is perhaps best known for her starring role as Anne Elliot in the 1995 BBC adaptation of Persuasion. A familiar face on both stage and screen, she worked regularly with the Royal Shakespeare Company during her early career, performing as Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth, among other roles. In 2009, she was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performance as Sarah in Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simon Stephens</span> British playwright (born 1971)

Simon Stephens is a British-Irish playwright and Professor of Scriptwriting at Manchester Metropolitan University. Having taught on the Young Writers' Programme at the Royal Court Theatre for many years, he is now an Artistic Associate at the Lyric Hammersmith. He is the inaugural Associate Playwright of Steep Theatre Company, Chicago, where four of his plays, Harper Regan,Motortown, Wastwater, and Birdland had their U.S. premieres. His writing is widely performed throughout Europe and, along with Dennis Kelly and Martin Crimp, he is one of the most performed English-language writers in Germany.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julia McKenzie</span> English actress, presenter, director, writer

Julia Kathleen Nancy McKenzie is an English actress, singer, presenter, and theatre director. She has premièred leading roles written by both Alan Ayckbourn and Stephen Sondheim. On television, she is known for her BAFTA Award nominated role as Hester Fields in the sitcom Fresh Fields (1984–1986) and its sequel French Fields (1989–1991), and as Miss Marple in Agatha Christie's Marple (2009–2013).

Ariyon Bakare is an English actor. He has appeared in the BBC One soap opera Doctors as Ben Kwarme, the Amazon Prime television series Good Omens and Carnival Row, and the BBC One and HBO series His Dark Materials. Prior to this, Bakare made appearances on British dramas such as The Bill, Casualty, and Holby City.

Sir Harold Hobson CBE, was an English drama critic and author.

Talawa Theatre Company is a Black British theatre company founded in 1986.

Catherine Russell is a British stage, television and screen actress.

Helen Edmundson is a British playwright, screenwriter and producer. She has won awards and critical acclaim both for her original writing and for her adaptations of various literary classics for the stage and screen.

Laura Wade is an English playwright.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noma Dumezweni</span> British actress

Noma Dumezweni is a South African-British actress. In 2006, she won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role for her performance as Ruth Younger in A Raisin in the Sun at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre. In 2017, she won the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance as Hermione Granger in the original West End run of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child; she reprised the role for the show's original Broadway run and, in 2018, was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play.

Robert Holman was a British dramatist whose work has been produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and the Royal Court Theatre, as well as in the West End and elsewhere, since the 1970s. He was a resident dramatist at both the RSC and the National Theatre.

David Farr is a British writer, theatrical director and Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Michael Elliott, OBE was an English theatre and television director. He was a founding director of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.

Rachel O'Riordan is an Irish theatre director. She is currently the artistic director at the Lyric Hammersmith, London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Bhattacharjee</span> English actor

Gautam Paul Bhattacharjee was a British actor who worked on stage, film and television.

Anthony Surath Jayawardena is a British actor, known for his roles as Mr Bhamra in the West End musical Bend It Like Beckham the Musical and for his work with the Royal Shakespeare Company, Shakespeare's Globe and Royal National Theatre. In 2018, he began portraying the role of Rashid Hyatt in the Channel 4 drama Ackley Bridge.

Natasha Delia Letitia Gordon is a British playwright of Jamaican heritage. In 2018, after a career as an actor, she made her debut as a playwright with the play Nine Night, becoming the first black British female playwright to have a play staged in the West End.

Iqbal Khan is a theatre director. He is associate director at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and Associate Artist of Box Clever Theatre Company.

The Empress is a 2013 play by Tanika Gupta, commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company and premiered in Stratford upon Avon. It is now on the GCSE curriculum.

References

  1. ↑ "About". Tanika Gupta.
  2. ↑ Verma, Jatinder (12 September 2017). Shakespeare's Globe (ed.). "A passion from within: Tanika Gupta on her new play about the fight for Indian Independence". Medium .
  3. 1 2 3 4 Roy, Amit (15 July 2008). "Hanged Bengali icon's great-niece bags MBE". The Telegraph . Archived from the original on 4 February 2013. Retrieved 1 May 2012.
  4. ↑ Roberts, Alison (7 August 2007). "London's teenage crisis". London Evening Standard . Retrieved 20 February 2015.
  5. ↑ "Theatre is a great leveller, says Shabana Azmi". Telangana Today.
  6. ↑ "Playwright Tanika Gupta career overview".
  7. 1 2 "Tanika Gupta talks to Lyn Gardner about her new play". The Guardian. 25 July 2006.
  8. ↑ "The Empress". 11 June 2015.
  9. ↑ "Tanika Gupta's new RSC play sheds light on a hidden royal history". Birmingham Mail. 19 April 2013.
  10. ↑ "The Empress | By Tanika Gupta". Royal Shakespeare Company.
  11. 1 2 "The Empress, Swan Theatre, RSC, Stratford-upon-Avon, review". The Daily Telegraph.
  12. ↑ "The Empress (RSC)". WhatsOnStage. 17 April 2013.
  13. ↑ "A Doll's House review – Ibsen's classic shrewdly reimagined in colonial India". The Guardian. 12 September 2019.
  14. ↑ "Review: A Doll's House at the Lyric Hammersmith".
  15. ↑ "Review: A Doll's House (Lyric Hammersmith Theatre)". WhatsOnStage. 12 September 2019.
  16. ↑ "A Doll's House". BBC.
  17. ↑ "Lions and Tigers review: Superb central performance from Shubham Saraf" . The Independent. 4 September 2017. Archived from the original on 26 May 2022.
  18. ↑ "Review: Lions and Tigers (Sam Wanamaker Playhouse)". WhatsOnStage. 30 August 2017.
  19. 1 2 "Lions and Tigers review – bloody epic sounds out India's young revolutionaries". The Guardian. 30 August 2017.
  20. ↑ "Plays with conviction: the power of prison drama". The Guardian. 14 May 2009.
  21. ↑ "Gladiator Games , Crucible, Sheffield". The Guardian. 27 October 2005.
  22. ↑ "Hobson's Choice, Young Vic, London". The Guardian. 3 July 2003.
  23. ↑ "Theatre Review: HOBSON'S CHOICE – Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester". Frankly My Dear UK. 6 June 2019.
  24. ↑ "Review: Hobson's Choice at Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester".
  25. ↑ "Hobson's Choice review – saris, acid house and a Salford Cinderella story". The Guardian. 6 June 2019.
  26. ↑ Sarah Hemming (28 May 2021). "Playwright Tanika Gupta on her new drama about young Gandhi in London". Financial Times.
  27. ↑ "Stream review: Living Newspaper Edition 4 at Royal Court Theatre". British Theatre Guide. 9 April 2021.
  28. ↑ "Out West".
  29. ↑ "Living Newspaper Edition 4". Royal Court.
  30. ↑ "No. 58729". The London Gazette (Supplement). 14 June 2008. p. 17.
  31. ↑ Stephen, Phyllis (20 August 2018). "Lions and Tigers wins the James Tait Black Prize for Drama 2018". theedinburghreporter.co.uk.
  32. ↑ "BBC Radio 4 - BBC Audio Drama Awards, 2013 Audio Drama Awards winners - Tanika Gupta, winner of Best Adaptation from Another Source". BBC.
  33. ↑ "Welcome to the most prestigious Asian awards". Asian Achievers Awards. Retrieved 4 November 2021.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.