Empress

Tanika Gupta was born in London the year after her parents arrived from Calcutta. Over 20 years, she has written over 20 stage plays that have been produced in major theatres across the UK. She has written 30 radio plays for the BBC and several original television dramas, as well as scripts for EastEnders, Grange Hill and The Bill. She has taught drama and run workshops in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Cuba, India, USA, the Netherlands, Germany, Argentina, Chile and across the UK. She is a fellow of Rose Bruford College, runs courses for the Arvon Foundation and has led playwriting workshops in many UK universities, as well as for the National, Royal Court, Hampstead and Young Vic theatres and Theatre Royal Stratford East. She has been writer-in-residence at the National Theatre and Soho Theatre, a fellow at the Playwright’s Studio in Glasgow and a writing tutor in HMP Winchester. She has won numerous awards for her work and is presently a visiting lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London, and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.Professor Jane Garnett is Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Wadham College, Oxford, UK. Dr Garnett's research is on intellectual, cultural and religious history, predominantly of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the study of gender and visual culture over wider periods. She was Consultant Editor for Women on the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (1994-2004), as well as acting as Associate Editor for Victorian Women Philanthropists.

Gupta's play records the rage felt at the injustices of imperial domination.

• ChronologyCOMMENTARYPLAYWRIGHTCONTEXT1. Late-19th-century imperial context2. Context within which the play was written and rehearsed in 2012/133. RSC’s commissioning strategy for new plays THEMES1. Class2. Race3. Gender 4. Religion 5. British Empire CHARACTERS (HISTORICAL & FICTIONAL) & CHARACTERISATIONDIALOGUEDRAMATIC DEVICES1. RSC production: sets, costumes, role of instrumental music and song 2. Use of short scenes to create a visual and textual mosaicRESPONSEAudience and press responsePLAY TEXTFURTHER READING AND VIEWING