South Asian

Akash Mohimen

Representative Plays:

Under the Chestnut Tree (2013)
Mahua (2011)

About the Playwright:

Akash Mohimen is a young writer and filmmaker originally from Jamshedpur, but now based in Mumbai. He has written four plays including two children's plays, The Mighty Mirembayanna and The Prisoners of Peace, and a musical, Hattamala. He took part in the Royal Court/Rage workshops in 2010 and 2011. He wrote his fourth play Mahua at the workshop and it has been produced at Prithvi Theatre, Mumbai and...

Abhishek Majumdar

Representative Plays:

The Djinns of Eidgah (2017)
Afterlife of Birds (2012)

About the Playwright:

Abhishek Majumdar is a playwright, theatre director, teacher and actor based out of Bangalore. He holds Performing Arts Scholarships from Charles Wallace India Trust, the Inlaks Foundation and the London International School of Performing Arts. His plays have won the Hindu Metro Plus Playwright’s award and the Toto Funds the Arts award and have been produced in India and England. He is also a part of the International...

Aditi Brennan Kapil

Representative Plays:

Orange (2018)
Imogen Says Nothing (2017)
Agnes Under the Big Top (2012)

About the Playwright:

Aditi Brennan Kapil is a television and theater writer, actress, and director. She is of Bulgarian and Indian descent, and was raised in Sweden prior to moving to Minneapolis, and more recently Los Angeles. Recent projects in television include Away on Netflix, and American Gods on Starz, and in theater Orange for SouthCoast...

Girish Karnad

Representative Plays:

Hayavadan (1971)
Yayati (1961)

Bio:

Girish Raghunath Karnad is a contemporary writer, playwright, screenwriter, actor and movie director in Kannada language. His rise as a prominent playwright in 1960s marked the coming of age of Modern Indian playwriting in Kannada. He is a recipient of the 1998 Jnanpith Award for Kannada, the highest literary honour conferred in India. For four decades Karnad has been composing plays, often using history and mythology to tackle contemporary issues. He...

Dipika Guha

Representative Plays:

Unreliable (2019)

The Art of Gaman (2018)

Yoga Play (2017)

Bio:

Dipika Guha is an LA based, Calcutta - born playwright raised in Russia, India and the United Kingdom. Her plays include Yoga Play (South Coast Rep, Gateway, Moxie Theatre & SF Playhouse), The Art of Gaman (Theatre 503 London, Relentless Award semifinalist) and Unreliable (Kansas City Rep). Recent commissions include Azaan, a play for for Oregon Symphony, In Braunau for Playwrights Horizons Theatre...

Dharamvir Bharati

Representative Plays:

Andha Yug (1953)

Bio:

Indian playwright, novelist, and poet Bharati was known in the last decades of his life as the editor of the prestigious Hindi weekly Dharmayug, but his enduring reputation rests on two seminal works from the early 1950s. Like Kurosawa's filmRoshomon, the novella Suraj ka satvam ghora (...

Badal Sircar

Representative Plays:

Procession (1983)
Stale News (1979)
Evam Indrajit (1974)

Bio:

Badal Sircar was an influential Indian dramatist and theatre director, most known for his anti-establishment plays during the Naxalite movement in the 1970s and taking theatre out of the proscenium into public arena, when he founded his own theatre company, Shatabdi, in 1976. He wrote more than fifty plays. A pioneering figure in street theatre as well as in experimental and contemporary Bengali theatre with his egalitarian "...

Ayeesha Menon

Representative Plays:

Pereira’s Bakery at 76 Chapel Road (2010)

Bio:

Ayeesha Menon is currently working on a play for the National Theater. At the BBC Audio Drama Awards, her adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities won Best Adaptation in 2019 and her adaptation of Midnight’s Children won the Outstanding Achievement award in 2018. Her stage play Pereira’s Bakery at 76 Chapel Road had a reading at the Royal Court.

Source: The Agency (UK)

KEYWORDS:

Indian

Ayad Akhtar

Representative Plays:

The Invisible Hand (2014)
Disgraced (2012)
The War Within (2005)

Bio:

Ayad Akhtar was raised in Milwaukee, WI and credits his high school teacher for introducing him to writing. He studied acting and theatre at Brown University and received an MFA from Columbia University in Film Directing. His college thesis screenplay became the independent film The War Within, which was nominated for Best Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards. His first play Disgraced won him the 2013...

Shishir Kurup

Representative Plays:

Assimilation (2002)

Exile: Ruminations on a Reluctant Martyr (1992)

Bio:

Shishir Kurup, is an actor/writer/director/composer and Books-On-Tape narrator born in Bombay, India raised in Mombasa, Kenya and the U.S. His one-man shows "Assimilation" and "Exile: Ruminations on a Reluctant Martyr" (the latter a commission from Highways Performance Space) have been seen in countless cities and universities nationally and internationally including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Austin, London and Manchester,...