INDIA AT THE ROYAL COURT

In June 2005, the Royal Court, in collaboration with Tamasha Theatre Company, invited four of our writers from Writers’ Bloc One to work on new plays with them in London. They were accompanied by four Indian actors and together with four British-Asian actors and the Royal Court artistic team, they workshopped these new plays in a unique collaboration of Indian and British-Asian Theatre artists. Extracts of these plays were then presented at an open forum in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs at the Royal Court Theatre to a sold-out audience.

One of the plays developed as part of this week was FREE OUTGOING by Chennai-based playwright Anupama Chandrasekhar. FREE OUTGOING went on to be produced by the Royal Court as part of the Autumn 2007 International Season in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, directed by Indhu Rubasingham. Following a successful sold-out, critically acclaimed run Upstairs, it transferred to the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs in Summer 2008 before opening at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh as part of the 2008 Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

In February 2010, the Royal Court produced a second play by Anupama Chandrasekhar, DISCONNECT, a Royal Court commission. The play has already received great critical acclaim in the UK.

Aside from this quite a few of the Writers’ Bloc playwrights have attended the International Residency at the Court. These include Ajay Krishnan, Ram Ganesh Kamatham, Sandesh Kulkarni and Swar Thounajam.