Tanika Gupta: Historical Plays

by Tanika Gupta

Published 30 November 2018
Based on the true story of her great uncle and freedom fighter Dinesh Gupta, Lions and Tigers is Tanika Gupta's most personal play yet. It charts Dinesh Gupta's emotional and political awakening as this extraordinary 19 year old pits himself against the British Raj.

The Empress: 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.

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.

Refusing to be pigeonholed as an `Asian playwright', acclaimed British playwright Tanika Gupta has a fresh perspective on race relations, generational divide and sexual politics.

The first collection of plays by acclaimed British dramatist Tanika Gupta includes Sugar Mummies, White Boy, Sanctuary and Gladiator Games.

Refusing to be pigeonholed as an ‘Asian playwright’, Gupta has a fresh perspective on race relations, generational divide and sexual politics.

A National Youth Theatre production, White Boy attempts to make sense of school-age stabbings and the nature of inner city white identity, in an increasingly complex racial landscape.

In Sugar Mummies, the gender politics of the sex trade are inverted as wealthy white women flock to the Carribean to take advantage of the native toy-boys. But who is exploiting who?

On the eve of his release from Feltham Young Offenders Institution, Zahib Mubarek was attacked and killed by his racist cellmate. Gladiator Games is a verbatim drama that documents the Mubarek family's pursuit of the truth and the incompetence of the official response.

In Sanctuary a London churchyard becomes a haven for the gardener Kabir. When a photo of an African church appears in this little Eden, a complex drama of morality and conscience unfolds.