Tanika Gupta (born 1 December 1963) is a British playwright. Apart from her work for the theatre, she has also written scripts for television, film and radio plays.

Early life

Tanika Gupta was born in London to immigrant parents from Kolkata, India, where her family had their origins. As a child, Gupta performed Tagore dance dramas with her parents. Her mother Gairika Gupta was an Indian classically trained dancer, and her father Tapan Gupta was a singer. The Indian revolutionary Dinesh Gupta was her great uncle. After attending Copthall Comprehensive School in London and then Mill Hill School for her A levels, Gupta graduated from Oxford University with a Modern History degree. After Oxford, her political commitment found expression in her work for an Asian women's refuge in Manchester. In 1988, she married David Archer an anti-poverty activist and ActionAid's current Head of Tax Justice and Public Services, whom she met at university. She and her husband then moved to London where Gupta was initially a community worker in Islington, writing in her spare time.

Career

Over the past 25 years Tanika has written over 25 stage plays that have been produced in major theatres across the UK. She has also written 30 radio plays for the BBC and several original television dramas, as well as scripts for EastEnders, Grange Hill and The Bill. The Waiting Room (produced for the National Theatre in 2000) was an early career highpoint with Indian film star Shabana Azmi performing on the stage in London for the first time. Gupta's 2013 play The Empress, about Abdul Karim and Queen Victoria opened in Stratford upon Avon and is now on the GCSE curriculum along with her adaptation of Ibsen's A Doll's House, which was first performed at Hammersmith Lyric in 2018. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Dominic Cavendish praised The Empress, saying: "This fascinating new theatre production has got 'make this into a movie' written all over it." Her play Lions and Tigers performed at the Sam Wannamaker in Shakespeare's Globe Theatre tells the remarkable story set in the 1930s of her great uncle, Dinesh Gupta, an Indian freedom fighter. Lions and Tigers is now published in Methuen's series of Modern Classics. Praise for Lions and Tigers singled out the "intimate storytelling, where Gupta's writing is at its most playful and potent" for particular note. Other notable plays include Sugar Mummies (Royal Court Theatre 2006); Gladiator Games (Sheffield Crucible Theatre 2006); Hobson's Choice (Young Vic 2001 and Manchester Royal Exchange 2018). Her most recent productions are Mirror on the Moor (Royal Court Living Newspaper, April 2021), and The Overseas Student (Hammersmith Lyric, June 2021).

Personal life

Gupta and her husband have two daughters, Nandini (born 1991), Niharika (born 1993), and a son Malini (born 2000).

Works

Theatre plays

Radio plays

Filmography

Awards and recognition

In 2008, Gupta was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours for her services to drama. In June 2016 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2018, Gupta was awarded with the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Drama for her play Lions and Tigers.