Robert Welch Public Lecture Featuring Tanika Gupta

The lecture will be at 6pm in BC-LG-304 (Lecture Theatre 2), followed by a drinks reception and food.

Tanika will talk about the influences on her writing, including her family’s political activism, music and artistry, the Indian national poet Rabindranath Tagore, and the enduring legacies of British colonialism. Having written for film and television series in the 1990s, including for Grange Hill, The Bill, and Eastenders, Tanika started writing stage plays in 1997 and is now one of the most prolific playwrights in the UK. She has published 30 plays, all of which have had main stage productions in the UK, with two of her works now on the GCSE national curriculum - her adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, and The Empress, which was staged at the RSC in 2013 and 2023. Her latest play, A Tupperware of Ashes, opens in October 2024 at the National Theatre in London. Tanika will talk about the motivations and politics that drive her work, and the ways in which she challenges power within the theatre industry and wider society.

Host or Publisher University of Ulster