British playwright Tanika Gupta’s play ‘The Empress’ is all set to make a comeback after ten years. The play set in 1887 during Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee revolves around the story of Rani Das, a sixteen-year-old ayah (nursemaid) to an English family, who arrives at Tilbury docks after a long voyage from India, to start a new life in Britain. Later this year, her adaptation of Charles Dickens’ ‘Great Expectations’ will be on the stage as well.
Asian Voice reached out to Tanika to discuss her upcoming plays and her journey in the world of theatre so far.
About ‘The Empress’ and how it is different from ten years ago
‘The Empress’ first premiered in the Swan Theatre in 2013 and was directed by Emma Rice. Discussing the development, the play has gone through in ten years, Tanika said, “Ten years ago, it was a big deal to get ‘The Empress’ on the stage. It was a wonderful production but it had a very short run of about four weeks in Stratford-upon-Avon and not enough people got to see it. Over the last ten years, a lot has changed in terms of politics and my own writing.”
“The play got chosen to be on the GCSE curriculum which is a big deal, and the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) decided to put it back in the theatres. I rewrote the play a little bit to make it better and it feels more political than it did ten years ago. The times have changed and people are quite hungry for these stories”, she further added.
The roots of the play and the conceptualization
The play finds its roots in ‘Ayahs, Lascars and Princes’ by Rozina Visram, a book that Tanika read in her early twenties. The book is about the early settlers from the Indian sub-continent, in Britain. “I loved the book and there was one photograph in particular, of the ayahs’ home where all the ayahs were sitting around a table and my curiosity about them grew”, she shares.
When Tanika started delving into the stories of the ayahs, she came across the lascars and the Indian politicians and decided to make them a part of her story as well. She also wrote about the camaraderie between Abdul Kareem and Queen Victoria.
The striking contrast between Queen Victoria’s friendship with Abdul and the treatment of Indians by Britain
Tanika talks about her idea of dealing with this contrast in her play ‘The Empress’- “The story of Queen Victoria and Abdul Kareem is that of a very close friendship that goes beyond race. Obviously, it is very complicated because while she has a friendship with him, Britain is going out in her name and murdering people and colonizing them.“
“In a nutshell, colonialism is bad, people are treated badly and it is all done through the head of the state, which is the queen. But in order to make the play more interesting and entertaining, you need to dig deeper than that”, she explained.
Making her mark as a South Asian woman
The journey so far has been difficult for Tanika but she believes that if one is extremely focused on what one wants to do, the result can be great. If you’re good, then people will recognize your talent.
She expresses, “It would be unfair of me to say that I had a terrible time because I had so many plays produced. Having said that, I still don’t see other British Asians around me. Like the National Theatre, once they put on Anupama Chandrasekhar’s ‘Father and the Assassin’, no other British Asian play went on there. And Anupama is a brilliant writer, but she is from India. Where are the British Asian voices in Britain?”
About her adaptation of ‘Great Expectations’
Tanika’s adaptation of ‘Great Expectations’ was written over 13 years ago and is also an old play that has been rewritten.
“The play is set in Bengal and is all about Pip, now Pipli, going to Kolkata to become an English gentleman. Miss Havisham, Herbert Pocket, and Jaggers are all still English. Pip’s family is all Indian. Abel Magwitch, on the other hand is an African convict from the Sindhi community. So, the play is not just an Asian version, it’s a real mixture, making it a lot more fun, helping the audience see something of themselves”, she explains.
“I have set the play during the first Bengal partition in 1905 to give it more context. Miss, Havisham, for example, becomes a representative of the British in India. It's essentially the same story and still all about rags to riches and rags again.”
