Tanika Gupta: Historical Plays

The second collection of plays by acclaimed British dramatist Tanika Gupta includes The Empress, Lions and Tigers and her adaptation of Great Expectations.

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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.